6. Mobilising Brazil As ‘Significant Other’ In The Fight For HIV/AIDS Treatment In South Africa: The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) And Its Global Allies

2011 ◽  
pp. 133-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Youde

A reciprocal relationship exists between HIV/AIDS and LGBT organizing, both historically and in the current era. This chapter analyses the dynamics of the interconnection between these movements since the first description of the disease we now know as AIDS appeared in 1981. It begins by describing the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and how the first organizations dedicated to HIV/AIDS emerged out of and drew inspiration from LGBT groups. It then looks at the specific cases of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and how both groups linked their activism strategies to previous LGBT organizing experiences in the United States and South Africa, respectively. The chapter then examines the reciprocal relationships between the domestic and international levels in HIV/AIDS and LGBT politics. Finally, it explores the tensions between the HIV/AIDS and LGBT movements and the lines of division within the HIV/AIDS movement itself.


Author(s):  
Isak Niehaus

In recent years confessional technologies have become an important means of confronting the HIV/AIDS pandemic. These include ‘coming out’ with HIV positivity, and providing public testimony about sickness and the transformative effects of antiretroviral medication. In South Africa, the urban-based Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has effectively deployed speech as a means of overcoming pathos. Drawing upon ongoing fieldwork in Bushbuckridge, I point to various forms of resistance against the imported cosmopolitan practice of confession, and show how silence is frequently a more prominent response to the pandemic. Residents of Bushbuckridge have refrained from undergoing testing for HIV antibodies and hardly ever speak about their condition in public domains. I argue that silence was not merely a means of avoiding stigma, but also reflected a fear of hearing potentially dangerous and deadly words. In local knowledge, pronouncements that one is ‘HIV-positive’ could crystallise sickness, invoke negative emotions associated with pending death, and thereby worsen suffering.


2003 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 669-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Caron ◽  
Joan Fitzpatrick ◽  
Ron C. Slye

Republic of South Africa v. Grootboom. Case No. CCT 11/00. 2000 (11) BCLR 1169. Constitutional Court of South Africa, October 4, 2000.Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign. Case No. CCT 8/02. At <http://www.concourt.gov.za>.Constitutional Court of South Africa, July 5, 2002.Two cases decided by the Constitutional Court of South Africa in 2000 and 2002 implement several economic, social, and cultural rights guaranteed by the Constitution of South Africa. The decisions illuminate the role in such reasoning of human rights treaties to which South Africa is a state party or a signatory. They also analyze General Comment No. 3 of die UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Committee). These cases, Republic of South Africa v. Grootboom, decided October 4,2000, and Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign, decided July 5, 2002, illuminate questions concerning both die jusdciability of economic, social, and cultural rights—at least as incorporated into Soudi Africa's Bill of Rights, sections 7 through 39 of its Constitution—and the concept of “minimum core obligations” as developed by the Committee.


Author(s):  
Joseph Harris

Although South Africa has the largest AIDS treatment program in the world, the ANC’s mishandling of the epidemic post-apartheid nevertheless contributed significantly to the spread of the disease. Unlike in Thailand or Brazil – where in many instances professional movements partnered with the state to respond to citizen needs and expand access to antiretroviral therapy – legal movements in South Africa however confronted a remarkably different dynamic: an intransigent government that, by virtue of unrivaled electoral majority, enjoyed the luxury of entertaining dissident AIDS science and experimenting with charlatan AIDS policy. While the strategic actions of the AIDS Law Project and the Treatment Action Campaign would eventually compel government action, initial government intransigence and the long and drawn-out nature of the legal process would prove to have horrific consequences, measured in hundreds of thousands of lost lives.


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