Mandisa Mbali, "Women in South African AIDS Activism: Towards a Feminist Economic and Political Agenda to Address the Epidemic"
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Concluding remarks

In this paper I have explored women's roles in AIDS activism in post-apartheid South Africa. I have discussed how women AIDS activists have addressed sexism, and I have set out a tentative advocacy agenda for gender justice in economic policy for a country facing a serious and entrenched epidemic. I have proceeded from the assumption that promoting a feminist political agenda is a precondition for promoting an economic agenda focused on gender justice in the context of a serious AIDS epidemic. Poor women's economic interests cannot be promoted by organizations that do not allow them to compete for leadership positions, or to challenge established modus operandi when those entrench sexism.

While women AIDS activists have contested the sexism in their organizations, sexism has acted as a barrier to their appointment to leadership positions within AIDS NGOs. I have made a call for the reform of economic policies that adversely impact poor South African women's lives as they have also disproportionately borne the impact of the epidemic.

I have described the historical and political barriers to women's rights work in South Africa such as the racial diversions in the country, how loyalty to an organization or party inhibits women's ability to mount feminist challenges to a political entity's mode of operation, and women's voicelessness in the wider culture. I have also discussed how violence against women inhibits their participation in public, vocal AIDS activism, particularly when women activists reveal that they are living with H.I.V. I have described the ways in which most women's relative poverty makes them vulnerable to social drivers of new infections such as rape and transactional sex with multiple partners. I have also called for a reduction in the cost of second-line regimens through the greater production and importation of generic medicines, because poor women in developing countries disproportionately bear the burden of caring for those who are ill with AIDS and for orphaned children. Finally, I have discussed how the global economic recession is already having an adverse impact on the financing of women's-rights work around AIDS and on programs to expand access to H.I.V. treatment. Feminist AIDS activists must point out that it is poor women who will bear the impact of these cutbacks, and that unpaid caregiving work is far from "free" for those who undertake it.

To some extent, the sexism in AIDS NGOs is a reflection of the persistence of the phenomenon in South Africa's wider political culture, economy and society. It is important not to portray women as helpless victims in the epidemic. South African women AIDS activists have successfully demanded the ability to contest fairly for leadership positions, and have increasingly asserted feminist agendas within the mixed-gender organizations they belong to, as the example of the TAC shows. In this context, the present moment in South Africa is one of great potential risk and reward for the advancement of women's rights in the midst of a serious gendered AIDS epidemic. While the new administration of Jacob Zuma has made proposals that may prove promising in terms of addressing economic inequality in the country in ways that could advance the rights of poor women, the recession and the persistence of sexism in South African political culture are potential threats to the advancement of a feminist agenda by the new administration. In the post-apartheid period, women AIDS activists have addressed the economic, political and social aspects of their oppression as they relate to the epidemic in changing ways. It remains to be seen how and whether they will successfully navigate a path to promote a feminist agenda within AIDS activist organizations through the waves of change caused by the global recession and the country's new political leadership.

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Endnotes

1. Inquest No. KwaMashu CAS 375: 12: 98, p. 18. The AIDS Law Project kindly sent the author a copy of this inquest in 2004. [Return to text]

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