Citation:
Date Presented:
February 8, 2013Abstract:
In 2002, South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled against President Mbeki and his Health Ministry for having refused to distribute medications that prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. The Treatment Action Campaign, an HIV/AIDS activist group, brought this particular case before the court, and has since been heralded by many across the globe as a champion of socio-economic rights. In considering other persisting socioeconomic inequalities, some assert that the TAC has created a model that other social movements within South Africa can capitalize on in attempts to affect desired change. Many others feel as though HIV activism has thus far eclipsed these other socioeconomic rights issues, impeding their fulfillment; after conducting ethnographic and secondary-source based research, I concur. The TAC has demonstrated a unique capacity to employ identity politics that are intertwined with the particularities of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I also examine the relationship between HIV and Tuberculosis, diseases characterized by extremely high rates of co-infection in South Africa. Tuberculosis has uniquely ‘benefitted,’ in terms of access to funding and the attention of policy-makers, from this relationship. Non-communicable chronic health issues remain largely ignored by national health policy makers, perhaps because they lack an objective link with HIV/AIDS. I conclude by discussing the TAC’s influence on Equal Education and the Social Justice Coalition. These two movements, after adapting strategies and activists from the TAC, may have the potential to ensure the fulfillment of other socio-economic rights in the future.