Politics and HIV and AIDS in South Africa : an analysis of the media reporting during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008)


Date: November 18, 2013
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When South African President Thabo Mbeki began doubting that HIV was the cause of AIDS in the late 1990s, failed to provide AIDS medication and stalled its introduction, openly supported HIV pseudoscientists and doubted HIV statistics, one of the most widely reported debates in the country’s history emerged. When two independent 2008 studies found that the death of approximately 330 000 South Africans could have been prevented between 1999 and 2007 if President Mbeki’s HIV policy made provision for AIDS medication, the AIDS debate was re-introduced, and it was these findings that provided the motivation for this study. The purpose of this study was to provide a historical perspective on HIV reporting in the media during Mbeki’s presidency in order to answer how the media reflected and reported on his HIV policy, and also to provide possible reasons for the way the media reported on the matter. Research has shown that the government (particularly President Mbeki and his health ministers) and AIDS social movement organisations (particularly the Treatment Action Campaign [TAC]) were the main actors framing the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Thus, this study examined the media’s HIV trail in reporting on these actors’ responses and counter-responses by means of content analysis. Qualitative analysis, in the form of questionnaires sent to health journalists who reported on HIV during this period, was completed in order to provide the possible reasons for the media’s reporting style. During the content analysis it was found that the media reporting was mostly positive towards the TAC and mostly critical towards Mbeki and his government, and the results of the questionnaires verified this, but also provided reasons why the media were mostly critical of Mbeki and his government. One principal reason was that the government’s policies on HIV were so blatantly contrary to scientific evidence and medically unethical that it was the media’s duty to fulfil their watchdog and surveillance role.


Publisher: Stellenbosch University
Year of Publication: 2013

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