On the fault-line: The politics of AIDS policy in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

In a context where the state has had the power to implement major policy initiatives such as the macro-economic Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy why has conflict around AIDS policy persisted as high politics? What explains the apparent inability of the state to exercise effective leadership and deal decisively with AIDS the particular strategies it has adopted in relation to AIDS activists and scientists and the ability of these activists and scientists to apply ongoing pressure and even precipitate a political crisis at the centre of power in the new state? This paper attempts to answer these questions through a closer examination of the various responses to AIDS in South Africa as a distinct set of social relations within the post-apartheid landscape. The particularity of the AIDS world or field is partly explained by the emergence of a fatal disease that has crossed and generated responses that cross many conventional social boundaries involving a wide variety of actors; and partly by the fact that it has spawned both local and global social movements. (excerpt)