Africa-Press – Malawi. Activist Vincent Wandale has revealed to being HIV positive. The land rights activist also claimed in a post on his unverified account to battling mental health, claiming he is diagnosed with psychosis – a mental health condition in which people hallucinate and lose touch with reality. According to Wandale, his mental health issues started because of HIV.
“In this week of self-determination drama, I did not I did not take my Anti-Retroviral Drugs (arvs) to reduce my Human Immunodeficiency Virus HIV resulting from acquired immune deficiency virus AIDS load. I have psychosis. A mental condition where a person see things unreal as real. I am a mad person. My psychosis results from my being an AIDS patient whose viral load has gone so high causing psychosis,” said Wandale.
A report on WebMD reads: “Psychosis is a condition that affects the way your brain processes information. It causes you to lose touch with reality. You might see, hear, or believe things that aren’t real. Psychosis is a symptom, not an illness. A mental or physical illness, substance abuse, or extreme stress or trauma can cause it.”
Wandale is a prominent land rights activist who for years has been calling for estates in Mulanje and Thyolo to allocate idle land to landless communities.
In 2017, he declared secession of the two districts from Malawi to form one country which e named United States of Mulanje and Thyolo (MUST). He was later arrested but after it was determined that he was mentally ill and the court sent him to a mental hospital in Zomba. In the Facebook post today, he said MUST is now renamed Ntombizodwa Lopanda Kingdom and his mother “is the new head of state of the country.”
