This week, the Centre for the Study of AIDS, at the University of Pretoria, published a new report, Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa, by South African writer and journalist Hein Marais. The report contains a comprehensive review of the published sociological and epidemiological research. Marais offers a critical analysis of the conclusions reached by such research, presents an alternative analysis of AIDS impact in South Africa, and proposes a minimum social package to reduce the damage.
According to Marais, most projections of how the AIDS epidemic will affect society are vastly oversimplified, or worse, tailor the narrative to fit prevailing ideological perspectives. But policies and programmatic responses based on conventional conceptions of the societal effects of AIDS are likely to fail, or may even further aggravate existing inequities.
Effective strategies to contain and repair the damage caused by the epidemic must be guided by a more critical appraisal of the existing data, taking into account the complex interplay of the epidemic with local resources and existing social arrangements, as well as within the proper historical and political context — and the context in South Africa is somewhat unique. While the liberation struggle ended the political system of apartheid, deep economic and social inequities persist.
AIDS will compound these problems. Marais argues that the least privileged sections of society will disproportionately bear the brunt of the epidemic and that this could undermine South Africa’s attempts to become a more just and equitable society. AIDS is thus deepening the structural crisis in South Africa which is already fuelling the epidemic.
“AIDS unmasks the world we live in and reiterates the need to transform it,” Marais writes.
He calls on South Africa to improve its social security net by developing a comprehensive package of social services and “as part of an overarching programme of redistribution and rights realization.” The package would rest on several pillars, including job creation and workers’ rights protection, safe-guarded food security, and the affordable provision of essential services.
“Overcoming the epidemic,” writes Marais “therefore coincides with the overarching need to bring about a much more just society, one in which all South Africans have at least the basic means to a secure livelihood and the realistic prospect of improving their lives and those of their children.”
To download the publication, go to: http://www.csa.za.org/filemanager/fileview/101/