Paper long abstract:

The HIV / AIDS pandemic remains one of the most serious threats to the future of South Africa. Focussing on the Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces with a striking apartheid legacy, this paper seeks to examine responses to HIV/AIDS in the province by two key stakeholders. The PSAM (Public Service Accountability Monitor) and the TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) are CSOs (Civil Society Organisations) who use different mechanisms to hold elected government officials accountable and challenge government responses to HIV/AIDS.

While the PSAM predominantly makes use of existing legislation and the media to try and hold the Eastern Cape government accountable for its use of public funds, including those specifically budgeted for HIV AIDS, the TAC promotes grass roots organisation, and collective action to pressurise the provincial and national governments into addressing the specific needs of people with HIV/AIDS. In addressing HIV/AIDS in the province, the organisations have made use of both individual action and targeted collaboration.

This paper provides a comparative insight into the structure of the organisations, examines their individual and collective means of engagement, and illustrates some of the challenges they have identified. These challenges include issues of democratic accountability, freedom of information, the use of provincial resources, and the state of public services within the province.

Their methods of tackling the 'new struggle', and individual aspects of the component parts of this struggle, are considered in the context of certain local, national and international aspects of the fight against HIV/AIDS - including Mbeki's denialism and the global neo-liberal capitalist agenda. Finally, the paper makes suggestions for a way forward in this struggle and proposes actions that activists, academics, and academic activists could consider.