60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

A luta continua! 1 – South African
HIV activism, embodiment and state
politics
Elina Oinas and Katarina Jungar
In February 2003 the South African HIV activist organisation, Treatment
Action Campaign (hereafter, TAC), handed over dockets charging
two ministers, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister of health,
and Alec Erwin, the minister of fi nance, with culpable homicide. Their
alleged crime was the failure to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic
in South Africa. In addition, the TAC started a ‘civil disobedience campaign’,
a political campaign that has a very strong symbolical meaning
in South Africa. Using a tool that was used in the anti-apartheid struggle
was quite a radical step in the new democracy, with the ANC in
government (cf. Friedman and Mottiar 2006). During the civil disobedience
rallies activists carried posters with photos of the two ministers
and a text saying: ‘WANTED. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Alec Erwin,
for not stopping 600 HIV/AIDS deaths every day’. The activists’ message
was clear: these two are personally responsible for lives lost every
day. At the same time the campaign pointed at the political machinery,
addressing the government as a whole as an institution accountable for
deaths in the country:
Our aim is to change government policy and to unite people
to condemn government culpability in the deaths of more than
600 people every day. We will not be provoked into acts of violence.
We aim to expose the violence of allowing 600 children,
men and women to die because they are poor and cannot aff ord
medicines.. 2
At that moment, in 2003, the focus was on the South African leadership,
but earlier the same activists had targeted the multinational
pharmaceutical industry and demanded that its profi teering should
not lead to poor people’s unnecessary suff ering. Thus, the activists address
the international community and do not accuse only the South
African politicians of negligence and murder. During the last fi ve
1 The struggle continues. Angolan Freedom fi ghters used this slogan. It was later
adopted by the anti-apartheid movement, and is now used by South African AIDS
activists, alluding to the historical legacy of the struggle.
2 ‘Volunteer for Civil Disobedience,’ TAC E-Newsletter, 10 March 2003.