Paper short abstract:

This essay focuses on HIV management at the world’s 3rd biggest mining company. Through ethnographic research at South Africa’s mines, I examine how the disjuncture between corporate and state healthcare creates an awkward urban topography of authority, and uneven service provision.

Paper long abstract:

It is over a decade since South Africa's leading mining companies first rolled out an HIV treatment and well-being programme for its employees. With sero-prevalence at South Africa's mines estimated at over 20%, HIV management has become the focus of the most intensive exercise of corporate responsibility. This essay focuses on HIV management at Anglo American—the world's third biggest mining company, largest private-sector employer in Africa, and the first company to provide antiretroviral therapy "free of charge" to their workforce in a context of little or no access to state healthcare. Through ethnographic research on South Africa's platinum belt, I examine how the new technologies of HIV management reinscribe old boundaries demarcating the company's zone of responsibility, erecting a metaphysical 'cordon-sanitaire' between the workplace and, what is described in corporate jargon as, the 'world beyond our perimeter fence' (Anglo American 2005: 16). While, the beneficiaries of this mission constitute a vanguard of ART recipients, the disjuncture between corporate responsibility and state healthcare translates into an awkward urban topography of authority, and uneven service provision, at the local level in Rustenburg. Increasing numbers of mineworkers opt to live outside the hostels - mostly in the informal settlements which sit cheek-by-jowl to the mining compounds, rubbing up against the eight foot fences. The spatialization of corporate responsibility creates liminal spaces between the company and the world beyond its domain, as responsibility for healthcare provision in the informal settlements is displaced between the state and the mining companies.