60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

250 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
Often, when debating policy implications in the media the discursive
politics disappear and the ‘human rights language’ enters. Some
commentators have argued that it is exactly the usage of a human
rights approach that has granted the activists their victories (Mbali
2005) and we do not doubt the necessity felt on the ground to use any
tools to save lives. Yet, we argue that in terms of civic education on
the politics of embodiment the human rights route is a cul-de-sac. It
counteracts the otherwise nuanced perspective on embodiment and
politics and teaches a politics of dichotomies: either-or; good-bad;
us-them.
Again, the campaign has diff erent lines of argumentation. While
some of it insists on a model of shared power and popular engagement,
a view on society as a collaborative accomplishment, the human
rights discourse points at mass violence and culpability of a camp
of politicians who are then shamed and vilifi ed. Here, Nattrass explains
the TAC tactic as a good strategy: ‘In all its campaigns, TAC
sought to maintain the moral high ground in order to win sympathy
for people living with AIDS and to shame government into more
progressive action’ (Natrass 2007: 46). Surely a powerful tool, but a
risky one, we will argue.
Antiretrovirals as a human right and scientifi c truth
Many commentators argue that precisely the human rights line in
the campaign has fi nally made the government change direction, albeit
reluctantly (Mbali 2005). The human rights language, however,
also disguises the potentially possible political choices of how to concretely
manage the epidemic. It limits the question to an ‘either this,
which is our right, or we die’ argumentation. What remains are clear,
black and white either-or-choices, rights and wrongs. If politicians
do not off er antiretrovirals (ARVs) for free through the public health
care system, they kill people. They consciously deny people their human
rights. In the following, Mark Heywood, treasurer and one of
the key fi gures in the TAC, openly declares that the human rights approach
was chosen because it indeed is more effi cient than a route that
would openly debate political or ideological questions, because such
debates are currently in crisis:
In South Africa defi ning and mobilizing struggles of the poor as
primarily moral contests, rather than ideological ones, has proved
to be a strategy with great potential for mitigating social crises and
forcing the reallocation of resources by both private capital and
the State to address the needs of the poor. Indeed, it might be ar-