Asserting rights : HIV-positive mothers accessing primary healthcare in Tshwane Metro

HIV/AIDS has sown devastation in post-apartheid South Africa. Women are particularly vulnerable to HIV-infection and the effects of HIV/AIDS as a result of disadvantaged social and economic positions. Women’s positions have been structured by South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past that excluded black South Africans from citizenship. The Constitution and Bill of Rights that followed the democratic transition in the 1990s, was a first step towards addressing the legacy of the past. In spite of gains in the Bill of Rights, women in post-apartheid South Africa still battle to realise their rights fully. This dissertation argues that a feminist conceptualisation of citizenship helps us understand why many South African women do not yet enjoy full citizenship. It explores the experiences of HIV-positive women who have accessed primary healthcare, and in particular, the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme. HIV-positive mothers struggle to realise their right to health in a post-apartheid context of neo-liberalism and gender inequality. Within the healthcare system they faced reproductive rights abuses which undermine their right to dignity and full citizenship.

Publisher: University of Pretoria
Year of Publication: 2012