60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

256 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
human rights discourse cannot, however, take into account the realities
of health care delivery. The complex nature of health care policies
and the political decision making is not there, because logic demands
they are kept on the level of simplifi ed arguments. Thus, it is a powerful
lobby tool, but does not back up the argument that lack of action
is mass violence.
The third alternative is the Foucauldian framework of power/knowledge/embodiment
where government inaction can in fact be seen
as mass violence – if it is discursively so defi ned by the workings of
power in the context of the South African political battle over AIDS.
There is no simple murderous act here, and no moral high ground
where certain acts can be pronounced as violence as such. But, when
all the generally accepted promises and premises of the government
are considered – and there is a clear indication that in this political
game the government has indicated that it should act on HIV/AIDs
in a certain way, yet still do little – the mass violence case is there.
The government played itself into a corner where it can be defi ned as
a perpetrator of mass violence and lethal biopolitics on a mass scale.
The ANC commitment to a welfare society, its commitment to the
socio-economic rights stipulated in the Constitution, its paradoxical
AIDS policies including a biomedical component and public health
service delivery model, leave at hand a tragedy where useless politics
costs lives, while other choices could have been made. Having said
this, it still is important to bear in mind that exactly how the ARV
delivery is organised is not a matter of one route only.
The human rights scandal, in contrast, is a dangerous discourse, not
because it points fi ngers but because it reduces alternatives to two
diametrical ones, and actors to either good guys or bad guys. Fingerpointing
is needed to hold politicians accountable, but in a democracy
and in the uncertain times of postmodern global bodies, the politicians
should be held accountable to their promises, and they should be
made to promise political futures, not unquestioned truths. Certain
truths are the domain of dictatorships or technocracies. The poststructuralist
AIDS debate acknowledges power play, and plays with
open cards. Justice is still a possible value but it is not uncontested or
holy. Activists, lobbyists and politicians should be scrutinised, not
according to some absolute rights defi ned by an international body,
but according to their commitment to the ideals of their own choice,
their ability to convince others of the rationale of such ideals. And
their ability to fulfi l the promises. If the result is death, albeit by a virus,
there can be culpability.