About
Over six million people in South Africa are HIV positive. South Africa has the world’s largest AIDS treatment programme with over 2.4-million people on antiretroviral therapy as of mid-2014. The UCT/Community Media Trust AIDS Archive comprises over 3 000 hours of footage documenting and preserving the experiences of those who have died and those who have survived but whose lives have been affected by the onslaught of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Since 1998, the Community Media Trust, a not-for-profit company that specialises in communication in the fields of health, human rights and gender based violence, has shot around 3 000 hours of video footage chronicling the social and political impacts of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. This unique archival project was launched by University of Cape Town Libraries (UCT) to safeguard and make accessible a decade of audio-visual documentation of the HIV/AIDS struggle.
The Archive provides an important historical record of the Treatment Action Campaign’s resistance to the government’s AIDS denialism. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was founded in December 1998 to campaign for access to AIDS treatment. It is widely acknowledged as one of the most important civil society organisations active on AIDS in the developing world. In 2006, the New York Times called the TAC ‘the world’s most effective AIDS group’, while the founding director of UNAIDS, Dr Peter Piot, has written that ‘TAC was in my opinion the smartest activist group of all, worldwide’.
In this sense, the UCT/Community Media Trust AIDS Archive provides a comprehensive record of the most powerful social movement to have emerged in post-apartheid South Africa – the HIV activist movement. It is a crucial resource of ‘primary source’ material for researchers whose focus lies beyond the pandemic history of HIV, and relates to any aspect of popular politics and resistance movements in South Africa, new forms of political participation that emerged during these transformative years, and the power of television to educate and to mobilise viewers.
The footage broadly represents the social character of the epidemic from transmission through prevention, treatment, care and support. It also contains extensive material on the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) struggle for access to care from 1999 to the present, and highlights the fight for the rights of marginalized and vulnerable groups susceptible to gender violence.
The Archive ensures that the largest audio-visual collection on the AIDS experience in Africa will not become lost to to local and international researchers or to policymakers around the world. It is housed in the University of Cape Town Library’s Manuscripts & Archives Department. The project of digitising the archive was supported by a $75 000 seed grant from the Elsevier Foundation.
Siyayinqoba | Beat It!
The footage in this archive was shot for the popular television series Siyayinqoba [‘We are beating it’ in isiZulu and isiXhosa], that has touched the lives of millions of South Africans for almost two decades. In 1998, the Community Media Trust, a not-for-profit company that specialises in communication in the fields of health, human rights and gender based violence, developed a weekly television show that has worked to promote the mass understanding of HIV treatment and prevention literacy.
Siyayinqoba has been broadcast on SABC1 since 2004, on eTV before that and the latest season is being broadcast on EDTV (channel 190 on DSTV). Season 8 was voted the best educational series by SABC education in 2014. Each episode tells the stories of real South Africans who are affected by the quadruple burden of disease (HIV/Aids, underdevelopment, chronic diseases related to unhealthy lifestyles, and injuries), through a documentary format that promotes healthy living and disease prevention.
Treatment Action Campaign leaders like Busisiwe Maqungo, Lihle Dlamini and the late Vuyani Jacobs have been key contributors on the show. Hundreds of TAC members have been interviewed and have appeared on it.
Siyayinqoba’s community journalists travel to far-flung areas of Mzansi to tell real stories of real people that inform, empower and demystify health matters. They have travelled to both rural and urban areas telling stories from all nine provinces, and the show regularly features marginalized and vulnerable groups such as young women, children, prisoners, mobile populations (e.g. migrant and seasonal workers) and sex workers.
The TV series is part of a broader programme of public action that embraces every medium – from community radio programmes to public service announcements, newspaper articles, community engagements, social media, pamphlets, condom wrappers and community mobilisers going from door to door in rural areas. From the outset, Siyayinqoba has been on the side of ordinary South Africans dealing with health challenges every day.
Sensitive material
There is a lot of sensitive material in this archive that involves the documentation of children with HIV/AIDS, and others who granted permission for public broadcast or disclosure under specific terms and conditions. When the footage was broadcast on TV, for example, the identities of certain individuals were concealed by sonic or visual blurring.
Researchers may only view this sensitive material in private within the physical bounds of the archive at the University of Cape Town. They may not copy or reproduce this material. They may later refer to the content as part of a larger project, however no names may be mentioned as wholesale broadcast permission was never granted and identifying individuals by name or otherwise would be an ethical violation.
The reason a lot of this material is highly sensitive is that it often involves people whose families, loved ones and immediate communities as well as the broader public, did/do not know their HIV positive status. The screening of this volatile material, which exposes the fact that certain individuals were/are positive, risks serious trauma and economic repercussions due to the persistence of negative stereotypes around HIV/AIDS.
Public perceptions of HIV/AIDS have dramatically shifted due to a wide range of socio-political factors, ranging from personal disclosures by celebrity role models and political icons, to the South African government’s hard-won acceptance of the link between HIV and AIDS. Many people are now on treatment and live healthy lives with HIV in the same way as any person with a chronic illness.
Still, there is a high risk of inadvertently opening up wounds from the past that were already healed or initiating bullying or other forms of social fallout due to disclosure of a person’s private health status.
