60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

a luta continua! – south african hiv activism, embodiment and state politics 251
gued that this is currently the only way to contest pro-poor struggles
given that the political ideology of the poor (still described as
socialism but rarely defi ned) still faces a crisis of theory and thus
legitimacy (Heywood 2005: 208).
What happens is a polarisation of the debate. This pushes the government
into a corner, characterises diff erences of opinion as either stupid
or immoral, hampers collaboration and dialogue, and removes the
larger debate of the future of the state and democracy from the table.
When political choices are turned into moral questions, the politics
of the future of the state cannot be openly discussed.
What the TAC is covertly arguing for is a social democratic welfare state
model, unlike, for example, the Ugandan combination of private-public
partnerships. This is sometimes openly discussed, but mainly hidden in
the human rights talk. Furthermore, the issue of how health care provision
is concretely implemented can be lost in the battle. Here, for example
a South African pharmacologist regrets the state of the debate:
As with any other highly contested terrain, debates around the provision
of antiretroviral treatment in South Africa, and in particular
in the public health sector, have been characterized by starkly stated
and fi rmly held opinions. Such opinions have reduced the space for
meaningful debate about the very real challenges of implementing
antiretroviral treatment in the country. The debate has instead become
a contest between notions of toxicity and/or infrastructural
defi ciencies on the one hand, and the moral and ethical imperative
to take immediate action on the other (Gray 2005: 524).
The argument that there is only one good way to go is backed up by a
faith in a pure scientifi c truth on HIV/AIDS. Claiming certainty and
neutrality of scientifi c knowledge and biomedical facts (of any illness
or bodily phenomenon) must of course be understood in the context
of the AIDS denialism that emerged in the previous leadership of the
country. In such a context it became crucial to defend ARV science as
legitimate. In order to accomplish a fi rm counterstrike to denialism, a
rhetoric of indisputable scientifi c authority was deployed. For example,
Nicoli Nattrass, a scientist who identifi es with the activists, ends
her book with: ‘Only when science is fi r mly re- e stablished as the benchmark
for AIDS treatment will its ghost fi nally be exorcised (Nattrass
2007: 184; italics ours).
But, as many scholars of science, technology and medicine today
claim, science does not need to be defended as an apparatus of fi rm
truths. Scientifi c uncertainty does not necessarily open space for out-