Manuals and toolkits
Cross sectoral partnerships and participation: Are National AIDS Councils a useful mechanism for facilitating partnerships and participation?
Despite some success, there is room to improve the South African National AIDS Council
Authors:
A. Strode
Publisher:
Institute for Democracy in South Africa , 2003
This workshop report prepared by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), examines the impact of a multi sectoral approach in dealing with the health, social and economic impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. The authors evaluate the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) as a model for improving multi-sectoral partnership working. SANAC is a broad based government and civil society partnership that is successful at bringing together a wide range of sectors that have previously collaborated little together. Successful partnerships include the development of a ‘Women in Partnership Against AIDS’ forum, a men’s forum and collaboration with a larger retail group.
Despite these successes, the authors find that SANAC has no formal mechanism for interacting with outside groups and no funding to assist with development of partnerships across sectors. Civil society representatives argue that SANAC does not have a democratic culture – 49 per cent of its members represent the state. It also excludes almost all of South Africa’s leading experts on HIV/AIDS as well as key NGOs and science and medical representatives. The report concludes that national AIDS councils (NACs) are a useful mechanism for driving a multi-sectoral response but that they need formal processes to enable them to develop partnerships across other sectors. In addition, a range of stakeholders should to be represented on the council in order to foster a democratic culture.
