Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword & Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Zapiro cartoons
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Activist Mediations of ‘Rights’ & Indigeneous Identity
- 3 Citizens & ‘Bushmen’
- 4 ‘Civil Society’ & Popular Politics in the Postcolony
- 5 AIDS, Science & the Making of a Social Movement
- 6 Rights Passages from ‘Near Death’ to ‘New Life’
- 7 Sexual Rights & Sexual Cultures
- 8 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - AIDS, Science & the Making of a Social Movement
AIDS Activism & Biomedical Citizenship in South Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword & Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Zapiro cartoons
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Activist Mediations of ‘Rights’ & Indigeneous Identity
- 3 Citizens & ‘Bushmen’
- 4 ‘Civil Society’ & Popular Politics in the Postcolony
- 5 AIDS, Science & the Making of a Social Movement
- 6 Rights Passages from ‘Near Death’ to ‘New Life’
- 7 Sexual Rights & Sexual Cultures
- 8 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
It was not AIDS that was killing our loved ones, the dominant analysis went. It was witchcraft. Fingers were pointed at suspected neighbours.
(Thokozani Mtshali, Sunday Times, 28 April 2002)The biggest challenge for doctors in rural KZN is getting HIV-positive women to ask for treatment: A bitter pill to swallow.
(Mail & Guardian, 23 August 2002)This monograph discusses the vexed question of HIV/AIDS … It also accepts that the HIV/ AIDS thesis [is] informed by deeply entrenched and centuries-old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans and black people … In our own country, the unstated assumption about everything to do with HIV/AIDS is that, as a so-called ‘pandemic’, HIV/AIDS is exclusively a problem manifested among the African people.
(Castro Hlongwane, March 2002)African children's faces have been paraded in the media in the name of giving a face to AIDS. I agree the disease must be given a face – but it should be human, not African … Parading African children in the media adds to the stigma already suffered by those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
(Phumzili Simelela, Mail & Guardian, 6 December 2002)This chapter focuses on how South African AIDS activists and government interpreted and responded to the AIDS pandemic. In South Africa responses to HIV/ AIDS have included forms of activism that, like the transnational housing activism case study in Chapter 4, could best be described as ‘globalisation from below’ (Appadurai 2001).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Revolution to Rights in South AfricaSocial Movements, NGOs and Popular Politics After Apartheid, pp. 100 - 126Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008