AIDS activism – new opportunities for citizenship in South Africa?

Post-apartheid South Africa has witnessed the growth of social movements using on-the-ground and network-based modes of organisation that operate at the same time in local, national and global political environments. Networks across countries and grassroots mobilisation have allowed HIV/AIDS activists to use tactics confronting the state while supporting it to be more inclusive.

Research from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa explores the organisational practices and strategies of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a Cape Town-based social movement.

Founded in 1998, TAC campaigns for affordable treatment for those with HIV/AIDS, treatment for pregnant women with HIV, equality of treatment within South Africa’s public health system and wider spread of knowledge about HIV/AIDS treatment. TAC has challenged the fatalistic perception that little can be done for South Africa’s spiraling AIDS death toll.

TAC has fought on many fronts. It has:

• It has taken a leading role in activism by tackling the pharmaceutical industry in the media and the courts to demand the right to import generic anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs
• fought discrimination against HIV-positive people in schools, hospitals and workplaces
• worked to discredit AIDS scientists who question the link between HIV and AIDS, highlight government manipulation of AIDS research and democratise medical science
• launched campaigns in black townships to challenge AIDS myths, silence and denial
• taken the government to court for refusing to provide prevention of mother-to-child transmission treatment (PMTCT) programmes
• shown that a national AIDS treatment programme would be more cost-effective than simply treating AIDS-related infections

TAC’s grassroots mobilisation is driven by volunteers drawn from unemployed working class black women and youth, middle class professionals, religious leaders and congregations, teachers, trade unionists and community-based organisations. The strength of its support has enabled TAC to reject government accusations that its activists are ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘anti-African’ for challenging President Mbeki’s support for scientists who question the links between HIV and AIDS.

TAC has met with both cooperation and opposition to government policies. Its legal and political strategies reveal understanding of the politics of uncertainties – rather than an inflexible, opposition politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Opposition politics and civil disobedience have been combined with willingness to work with the government on national PMTCT and ARV programmes, to build links with state-run clinics and to train staff.

TAC, like the South African Homeless People’s Federation (SAHPF), is drawing on the mobilisation and negotiation skills which brought victory to the anti-apartheid coalition. TAC is an example of how contributing circumstances can allow a new social movement to:

• build political capabilities for democratic engagement and construct its own arena of action in multiple spaces
• use Internet and email networking opportunities
• mobilise the poor to participate in institutions and to interface with the state
• institutionalise civil society-led participation and formulate and construct new discourses of citizenship

As ARV programmes are launched in rural areas where there has been little AIDS activism and social mobilisation. TAC has a vital role to play in overcoming obstacles to AIDS treatment.

Source(s):
‘AIDS activism and globalisation from below: occupying new spaces of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa’ IDS Bulletin, Vol 35, No 2, pp 84-90, Institute of Development Studies by Steven Robins and Bettina von Lieres, April 2004 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 18 November 2004

Further Information:
Steven Robins
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
University of Stellenbosch
Private Bag X1
7602 Matieland
South Africa

Tel: +27 21 808 2090
Fax: +27 21 808 2143
Contact the contributor: slr@sun.ac.za

University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)
34 Main Road
Muizenberg 7945
South Africa

Tel: +27 (21) 788 3507
Fax: +27 (21) 788 3726
Contact the contributor: info@tac.org.za

Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)

Other related links:
'Equity and access to HIV/AIDS treatment: getting the balance right in southern Africa'

'Insights Health Editorial: Delivering the goods - HIV treatment for the poor'

Global or local: what factors most affect health policy in South Africa?

'Editorial: Whose priorities? A response to the issue of antiretrovirals in Africa' from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Equinet, the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa

'Mainstreaming HIV/AIDS: Progress and challenges in South Africa’s HIV/AIDS campaign' from the University of Pretoria