Elite Contestation in South Africa, 2006–2018: The Making and Unmaking of a Power Elite

ABSTRACTOver the last decade, protest has become an enduring feature of the post-apartheid political landscape. Despite this wave of protest, the African National Congress (ANC) has largely retained its dominant status. The endurance of the ANC’s electoral support in spite of the high levels of protest has led Susan Booysen to conclude that protests in South Africa form part of a ‘dual repertoire’ of political contestation. She argues that protests are used to signal grievances to the ANC between elections but that, ultimately, people remain loyal to the party of liberation. This article interrogates Booysen’s claim through advancing an analysis of voting district and ward-level data in protest hotspots. The article highlights weaknesses in the methodological base of Booysen’s thesis. By analysing the support for the ANC amongst the estimated eligible voting-age population, this article suggests a different relationship between voting and protesting in post-apartheid South Africa.

Social unrests, inequalities and state capture in South Africa

South Africa's Prospects Under Cyril Ramaphosa

The local state is important for understanding the social context within which social conflict and contestation occur. Therefore, the local arena, with its specific historical development and local political scene should be factored into any analysis of social conflict and protest. The study acknowledges that most social movements and community protests have their base in the locality and are often aimed at challenging particular aspects within this geographic space. Furthermore, the study attempts to reflect on whether or not community protests in South Africa are aimed at challenging the newly established democracy or not? In this study, the author contends that in one way or another community protests are politically motivated with the purpose to a certain extent destabilising the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. In providing a historical reflection on these protests, the study acknowledges the fact that there is a link between community protests and the complaints against the issue of poverty escalation in South Africa. In the socially stratified South African society, the problem of closing the gap between the haves and the have nots is a contested terrain among political parties, politicised collective identity groupings as well as those individuals contesting the ANC’s rule and governance in South Africa. Although there are other reasons for contesting the ANC’s rule and governance, community based or social issues are mainly used as springboards to challenge the ANC in terms of the delivery of services are concerned. The final analysis of the study shows that in the main, the instigators of these community protests are politicised collective groupings with certain sociological and political identities.

The African National Congress (ANC) has ruled post-apartheid South Africa since the dawn of democratic rule in 1994. Since then, the ANC enjoyed fluctuating majority voter turn-out until recently when the party won the elections with less than 60% in the 2019 general elections. The genesis of this neglected swing is attributed to the rise of the alternative left, economic freedom fighters, unemployment rate and corruption scandals witnessed during the administration of Jacob Zuma and his cronies (the Gupta brothers) who championed state capture. Emerging heavily from the above sentiment, this study reviews the major challenges facing the ANC-led South African government. These are challenges that the Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration (incumbent) is still facing. The adoption of Afrocentricity in the study is indicated by the Afrocentric drive of casting out the demonic spirits of ignorance and arrogance in those who lead the ANC. The objective of this study is to highlight the significant challenges facing the ANC. Methodologically, this study relied on document reviews.

This article examines the pervasive issue of corruption in South Africa, particularly under the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC). Despite the ANC’s historical significance in transitioning South Africa to democracy and its rhetoric on combating corruption, the reality often suggests that “seeing is not believing.” The origins of corruption in South Africa can be traced back to colonial and apartheid-era influences, with the ANC’s ascendancy to power marking a critical juncture in this narrative. However, major corruption scandals have severely undermined public trust, exemplified by the state capture during Jacob Zuma’s presidency and the Gupta family's alleged corrupt activities. The article also assesses the legal and institutional frameworks for combating corruption in South Africa. It critically evaluates the effectiveness of existing laws and regulations and highlights key challenges, including political interference, lack of transparency, and weak institutions. Proposed reforms aim to enhance the capabilities and transparency of systems, ensure fairness and sustainability, re-establish investigative and prosecutive capabilities, and explore options in civil law and administrative sanctions. It scrutinises the ANC’s approach to corruption, questioning whether their actions align with their commitments and reflecting on the role of the Zondo Commission in promoting accountability. In conclusion, the article underscores the pressing need to combat corruption in the interest of South Africa's future and advocates for ongoing efforts to rebuild public trust and integrity. It emphasises that mere visibility of corruption does not equate to belief in the government’s commitment to tackle it, thus highlighting the necessity for concrete actions beyond rhetoric.

This article examines the decision by South Africa’s government to charge Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It situates this decision in the context of an ‘organic crisis’ in the African National Congress (ANC) related to its ‘revolutionary’ character. The article offers a periodisation of post-apartheid history in terms of how various ANC leaders have tried to manage this crisis. Thabo Mbeki sought to reinvent the meaning of ‘national democratic revolution’ (NDR) – the ANC’s dominant political discourse since 1969 – in terms of the ‘developmental state’. Jacob Zuma re-signified the NDR in terms of ‘radical economic transformation’. Cyril Ramaphosa, unable to give revolutionary meaning to ANC politics domestically, has tried to build its revolutionary credentials on the international stage as a vanguard of anti-imperialism and the struggle against colonialism internationally. The ICJ case emerges in this context, with several implications for South African foreign policy.

This article builds on the excellent article by Prof. Kgatle and Mashau who examined the prospects and success of the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosas by reflecting on the concept of Thuma Mina. In this article, Ramaphosas Thuma Mina's manifesto is placed in the same restorative context as the implementation of the African National Congress (ANC) step-aid resolution. Almost 27 years of democracy today since the ANCs came to power in South Africa in 1994, and yet members' moral values continue to decline, as reflected in Gwede Mantashe's devastating Organizational Diagnostic Report. This paper reflects the concept of Thuma Mina at Isaiah 6: 8 as redirected into politics by Cyril Ramaphosa to fight corruption in collaboration with the resolution of the 54th Conference. The Thuma Mina Group's implementation of StepAside threatened the unity of the ANC when the then suspended ANC General Secretary suspended his own suspension to suspend ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa. If the Magashule group succeeds in flaunting the party rules and rejecting the Step-Aside policy, this will lead to a political catastrophe. This paper uses two disciplines (theology and politics) to shed light on the prospects of Thuma Mina as advocated by President Cyril Ramaphosa, along with the fair implementation of the ANC's Step Aside resolution. This study is important as it provides a more concise understanding of the concept of Thuma Mina campaign.

The paper seeks to examine the key reasons behind the recent violent community protests in South Africa. It analyses the challenges the political elites would have to navigate in order to address the concerns of the people and the impact such protests would have on peace, stability, and governance on the African continent. Suffice it to note that political and community-based protests have been a common occurrence in South Africa since the advent of democracy in the country in 1994. Though the nomenclature and manifestation of such protests have been a subject of great debate, their frequent reoccurrence is a cause for concern for many in South Africa and, to a greater extent, the continent. The magnitude and scale of the July 2021 protests in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, precipitated by the incarceration of the former president Jacob Zuma, raises key fundamental concerns. First was the spontaneity in the manner in which the riots were undertaken; second was the scale and magnitude of destruction the two provinces experienced. This calls into question whether the protests were planned or genuine concerns arising from the incarceration of a political leader? While the incarceration of the former president was the trigger, there is evidence that the protests were inspired by unmet promises and the limited capacity of the country to deliver on people’s hopes and aspirations. However, Hough (2008), Tsheola (2012), and Nyamnjoh (2018) have argued that the root causes of violent protests in post-apartheid South Africa are not so much the unmet promises to address poverty and unemployment but rather people’s experiences of inequality and relative deprivation. In other words, people are dissatisfied when they compare their own quality of life and their economic and social opportunities with those of better-off communities and households. Fundamentally, therefore, one of the reasons the country has experienced violent protests is not necessarily the fact that the people are poor, but rather that protesters consider themselves poor vis-à-vis better-off communities. Evidently, the paper attempts to clarify some of the key issues political elites need to look out for as they put in place measures to avoid the re-occurrence of such protests and provides challenges the country would have to overcome in order to address people’s grievances. Fundamentally, what lessons can the African continent learn from these protests? What measures should the African Union, together with its member states, adopt in order to ensure that people’s genuine grievances are addressed in a timely and expeditious manner. The paper concludes by suggesting that a careful reassessment of local governance structures in South Africa would have to be contemplated with an emphasis on accountability and strict measures to sanction recalcitrant councilors.

This essay presents an analysis of recent protests in South Africa, providing historical context for the current cycle of mobilization, including the longest strike in the country’s history and the growing struggle among poor residents for free access to basic utilities. Taking the state-sanctioned massacre of striking mineworkers at Marikana in 2012 as a significant marker for this current phase of protests, the essay explores some of the subsequent political shifts, including challenges to the hegemony of the ruling political party—the African National Congress—and to the trade union in its traditional form. It argues that although experiences of collective action in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre hold the potential for a radical reconfiguration of politics in South Africa, there is also the danger that they will be unable to escape the old frameworks and sutures of the existing political landscape.

Marking Constitutional Transitions: The Law and Politics of Constitutional Implementation in South Africa

The 1920s were a time of ferment in South Africa, and the African nationalist press played an important role in communicating the issues and events of this decade to their audiences. The images of reality projected by these newspapers and magazines were necessarily contradictory, but they differed substantially from those projected by the established white press a crucial distinction, since African experiences were rarely represented in these publications. The African nationalist press represented the African petty bourgeoisie in South Africa, but as a number of scholars have noted, class boundaries in African society were neither rigid nor clearly defined. The petty bourgeoisie was fragmenting downward at an accelerated pace after Union in 1910, and alliances were frequent between class fractions that might otherwise have been differentially placed in the social relations of capitalist production.1 As discrimination and oppression at all levels intensified, more and more Africans in occupational categories that were on the fringes of the lower middle class descended into the ranks of the proletariat. Salaried white-collar workers fared little better: wage scales were so low that the more educated had little opportunity to emulate the lifestyles of their white counterparts. Hence it is not surprising that especially in periods of hegemonic crisis alienated fractions of the African petty bourgeoisie would find common cause with unorganized industrial workers and peasants in openly defying the status quo. Such a crisis occurred in the years immediately following World War I. Soaring food prices, low wages, and job discrimination temporarily galvanized African workers, especially on the Witwatersrand, where a wave of wildcat strikes and boycotts appeared to threaten civil order. Nationalists within the South African Native National Congress (renamed the African National Congress in 1923) were divided over the most appropriate response to take towards industrial strife, and mobilizing workers briefly radicalized African politics in the Transvaal. In the countryside, fluctuating grain prices, prolonged drought, and plant and animal diseases posed an immediate threat to food and

Reviewed by: Limpopo’s Legacy: student politics and democracy in South Africa by Anne K Hefferman Zolani Noonan-Ngwane (bio) Anne K Hefferman (2019) Limpopo’s Legacy: student politics and democracy in South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits UP. The last decade has seen the publication of an impressive number of historical studies that question and problematise the picture of Black Consciousness drawn by an earlier body of scholarship. In the latter works Black Consciousness often comes across as either an anticlimactic culmination to earlier forms of radical African nationalism (Gerhart 1978) or as a gateway to a more substantial political treatment of subsequent historical moments such as the secondary school student uprising in 1976 (Brooks and Brickhill 1980, Hirson 1979), and the popular mass movements in the 1980s (Marx 1992). Emerging at the end of the supposedly quiescent 1960s the political force of Black Consciousness is represented as ‘muted’, with its protagonists locked in an endless quest for ‘mythical self-sufficiency’, all this at the expense of providing both a political leadership for a restive working class and organisational structure for the largely spontaneous surge of student protests. Black consciousness historiography has come a long way since then. From in-depth intellectual histories (Magaziner 2010) to studies of the material impact of its developmental programmes on the countryside (Hadfield 2016), Black Consciousness has recently been treated substantially both in its own internal complexity and in relation to the broader anti-apartheid struggle within the country and, as in the volume under review, in exile. Limpopo’s Legacy: student politics and democracy in South Africa is a timely and unique contribution to this new body of work. The book tells the story of student and youth politics as they developed in today’s rural Limpopo Province and went on to influence, if not shape, the national struggle in South Africa. Thus, the book centres ‘local and regional experiences’ as its [End Page 133] main contribution both to the historiography of Black Consciousness and the recent histories of student and youth activism. Indeed, to the general international literature on youth the book’s particular contribution, both theoretically and ethnographically, is a Global South perspective. The book begins with the ‘incubation and development’ of Black Consciousness at the University of the North, currently the University of Limpopo, or more popularly Turfloop, in the late 1960s and 1970s, through the resurgence of multiracial Charterist local and regional student and youth congresses in the 1980s, and ends with the African National Congress’ (ANC) Polokwane national conference held at Turfloop in 2007. Indeed, the timeline for this study can be extended at both ends to start with the formation, at students’ agitation, of the first Student Representative Council (SRC) at Turfloop in 1960 (and its squabbles with the administration throughout that decade) and ending with the second wave of #FeesMustFall as it manifested at Turfloop in 2016. On the one hand, then, Limpopo’s Legacy problematises the widely held notion of the ‘quiescent 60s’ (see also Brown 2016) while, on the other hand, it anchors its historical narrative in recent events affecting higher education in South Africa. Besides its unique focus on local experiences, another rewarding and distinctive aspect of the book is that it is also an extended political profiling of generations of actors associated, by birth or education, with the Northern Transvaal (Limpopo Province): from Onkgopotse Tiro – through contemporary national figures such as Cyril Ramaphosa, Frank Chikane, Mosiuoa Lekota and Aubrey Mokoena – to Peter Mokaba and Julius Malema, Limpopo Provinces’ ‘most famous sons’ (216). While most of the literature on, and popular memories of, the national anti-apartheid struggle have focused on the urban political careers of these individuals, the book traces the trajectory of their activism from the rural Northern Transvaal where they politically came of age. Its argument is that this geographically marginal enclave was in fact the crucible of political activism and ideologies that influenced the national struggle. Like all black universities founded under the grand scheme of Bantu Education, Turfloop was designed to produce graduates who would form an ethnically homogeneous civil service and intellectual vanguard for the apartheid homeland system. Unlike some of the other black universities, however, Turfloop had...

Barbara Hogan: South Africa's Minister of Health

Introduction In May 2000, South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, convened an international panel to consider the causes of and appropriate solutions to AIDS in the African context. Significantly, the panel included representatives from the so-called AIDS dissident community. The willingness of the President to entertain, if not unequivocally endorse, dissident science created an international stir. It resulted in the Durban Declaration, a petition of more than 5000 scientists in support of the 'orthodox' views of HIV, launched at the International AIDS Conference in July 2000. However, in October 2000, after several months of intense national and international media coverage on the issue, the President informed his party, the African National Congress (ANC), that he was withdrawing from public debate over the science of HIV/AIDS [1]. Moreover, the government announced that it would make the antiretroviral drug nevirapine available in pilot sites to prevent mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT) of HIV [2], thus meeting a long-standing demand from the AIDS community. It thus appeared as if the national impasse that had characterized much of 2000 was showing signs of ending. In this context, the mobilization of an alliance, led by the Treatment Action Campaign and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, in support of the South African government in its court battle with the pharmaceutical industry, gave the impression of a united front against AIDS. Government and activists jointly celebrated when, in the face of international and local disapproval, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association withdrew its 3-year-old legal action in April 2001. [The court action was instituted against the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act (90) of 1997, specifically Section 15C, allowing for measures (compulsory licenses and parallel imports) that would allow government to procure essential drugs at cheaper prices.] However, the hopes that these events would put the AIDS response in South Africa on a new footing were premature. As the social and epidemiological crisis of AIDS unfolded, the political crisis surrounding AIDS intensified. During the course of 2001, the presidency's efforts to shape discourse on HIV were never far from the public space. Between February and May 2001, as the prices of antiretrovirals started falling and the generic manufacture of these drugs became a legal possibility, ANC Today, the web-based newspaper of the ANC, carried a series of articles about the dangers of antiretrovirals [3–6]. In September 2001, the President wrote a letter to the Minister of Health questioning mortality data (and therefore the magnitude of the HIV epidemic) [7]. Finally, reference to the dissident position emerged again in March 2002 when ANC leaders renewed the assetion that 'the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS is an assumption, not a fact' [8]. Despite a promise of change, it was clear that the dimensions of earlier controversies (questioning the effects of drugs, the seriousness of the epidemic and the aetiology of the disease) were still at stake. In the meantime, the pre-occupation and fascination with the AIDS problem in South Africa has continued unabated in the scientific literature, locally as well as internationally (see for example [9–12]). But is what is happening in South Africa that exceptional [13]? The present paper analyses the factors underlying recent events in the field of AIDS in South Africa. It suggests first that the often stark reporting of the controversies around AIDS fails to represent what is in reality a nuanced and ambiguous policy environment. Second, the paper suggests that the positions of the state, while incomprehensible on the surface, are driven by a set of pre-occupations that are worth noting and opening up for greater international debate. Denial and beyond AIDS activist Zackie Achmat was echoing a commonly held view when he wrote that 'Mbeki epitomizes leadership in denial and his stand has fuelled government inaction' [14]. Denial is generally seen as an individual or collective inability to face an intolerable reality by pretending that it does not exist. It is portrayed as a problematic but common phase in coming to terms with HIV; a pathological moment in the personal or national psyche that has to be overcome if appropriate responses are to evolve [15,16]. The slogan 'breaking the silence' has become a kind of global leitmotiv in AIDS, suggesting that denial is a universal phenomenon. In the South African context, denial responds to two distinct logics: denial of reality, and denial of justice [17]. The rapidity of evolution and the force of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, for which there are neither clear reasons nor simple solutions, are extremely difficult for anybody, whether state leader or lay person, to assimilate. In a denial of reality, leaders proclaim that the presence of AIDS is not true; meaning, it is not possible, so it is not. In addition, AIDS has emerged as a kind of everlasting affiliction precisely at the point when the end of apartheid should have brought a better life for all. This is a denial of justice: it is not normal; meaning, it is so, but it should not be. As one journalist put it 'how is it possible that, at the very moment we assume our victorious place as the leaders of a democracy we struggled for decades to bring about, we are presented with a dying populace, with a plague to which we have no answers?' [18]. The society is denied justice but is also itself denying justice. The government's brakes on the roll-out of nevirapine for MTCT have been fought on the basis of an unjustifiable denial of constitutionally entrenched social and economic rights. To suggest, however, that the essential character of the state's positions on AIDS is one of denial is not an adequate explanation. First, it is necessary to ask why the South African president, regarded as a credible African leader and a skilled diplomat capable of enormous discursive flexibility [19,20], should feel compelled to take such an awkward and unpopular stand on AIDS. In the face of massive condemnation and at enormous political risk, he has actively promoted an alternative reading of AIDS and its causes, questioning scientific facts and insisting on poverty as a factor in AIDS. This implies less a stance of silence than one of active defiance. Second, this stand has often been directly at odds with public policy on AIDS, which over the past few years has involved large and ever-increasing budgetary allocations and the implementation of programmes based on standard precepts for AIDS policy. It has thus been possible for the Director of the AIDS Program to play a leading role in the drawing up of normative frameworks such as the Abudja Declaration [21], and to say that she could insulate herself from 'the politics' and 'stay focused on delivery' [22]. It is also conceivable that, in the absence of intense political pressure from activists, MTCT prevention would have been decided and implemented in much the same way that many other health interventions have been in the post-apartheid era. Between the discourse and the policies of the South African state on AIDS lies a complex and sometimes contradictory set of motivations and processes, shaped in part by several years of controversy and contestation between various players over national AIDS policy, and in part by the longer history and experience of apartheid. MTCT as the focal point The AIDS policy process in South Africa has been characterized by disagreement and often overt conflict between political leaders and activists and researchers [23,24]. Despite their common origins in the political traditions of the anti-apartheid movement, a series of events in the AIDS field in the post-1994 period led to increasing alienation between these actors. The first was Sarafina II, an expensive AIDS musical commissioned by the Minister of Health in 1995 and openly criticized by the AIDS fraternity, in period when few were willing to challenge the new government. This was followed by over-hasty support by the government for virodene, a local AIDS 'treatment' discovery in 1997. Although eventually discredited, virodene was the subject of a media polemic between senior politicians (including Mbeki, Deputy-President at the time) and the scientific and medical community. Then, as the government launched the prevention-oriented Presidential Partnership Against AIDS in 1998, the activist community presented its own, treatment-oriented demands for the introduction of zidovudine for the prevention of MTCT. Arguments about the toxicity of zidovudine, including those made by dissident scientists, emerged at this point, with Mbeki (becoming President in 1999) increasingly intervening in public debates on AIDS and MTCT. Despite broad support from within the state bureaucracy for an MTCT programme, plans to initiate pilot sites during 1998 and 1999 were brought to an abrupt halt by political leaders (except in the Western Cape, a non-ANC aligned province, which instituted a zidovudine-based MTCT programme). Although HIV-infected infants account for less than 5% of total HIV infections in South Africa, and preventing these infections involves a relatively uncomplicated intervention, the issue of MTCT has assumed a political and symbolic importance way beyond its epidemiological and public health relevance. State resistance to MTCT can be seen as an ongoing attempt to establish and maintain its authority over the content and pace of AIDS policy. For activists, MTCT represents one of the first significant interventions, affordable and implementable on a large scale, targeted at people already infected with HIV. As a symbol of hope centred on children, MTCT has broad public appeal. The highly publicized story of Nkosi Johnson, the HIV-infected child who died at the age of 12 years in June 2001, exemplified the tragedy of HIV. MTCT also signals the entry of and the possibility of broader access to antiretrovirals in the public sector. Not insignificantly, a local research community involved in MTCT studies has provided the evidence and scientific legitimacy for a focus on MTCT [25,26]. Conflict and consensus Between May and November 2001, after ongoing pressure from a range of stakeholders and 9 months after first indicating its intentions, the government established 18 MTCT pilot sites (based on nevirapine) across the country, reaching about one-tenth of pregnant women using the public sector [27]. Further roll-out was to wait for 2 years of experience in the pilot sites. Frustrated at the slow pace of implementations of the MTCT programme, the Treatment Action Campaign and two other groups launched an application in the Pretoria High Court in August 2001, seeking to make nevirapine immediately accessible in the public sector outside of pilot sites 'if the doctor or attending nurse feels this is necessary' [28] and 'demanding that the government institute a comprehensive programme across the country to reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission' [28]. This legal action set in motion a new period of conflict ultimately leading to a resolution, in April 2002, in which the national Cabinet gave the go-ahead to roll-out MTCT and to widen the use of antiretrovirals [29]. These struggles (presented chronologically in Table 1) were significant for a number of reasons.Table 1: Chronology of events initiated by various actors around mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT) in 2001 and 2002.Seen as a whole, the positions of the ANC, the president and the executive suggest considerable ambiguity towards MTCT. Echoing the general 'two steps forward-one step back' dynamic of AIDS policy in the recent era, at several points statements in support of MTCT were made and policy processes set in motion for a roll-out, only to be contradicted shortly afterwards. For example, in February 2002, on the occasion of the opening of parliament, the President announced increased spending for AIDS, including for the expansion of the MTCT progamme. This was seen by 'the general community of media and analysts … as a turning point' in which 'Mbeki had done a Muhammed Ali shuffle, deftly moving out of the corner of the lingering debate about his views on Aids' [35]. The official position had evolved from open denial of scientific facts to more subtle concerns with public health infrastructure. However, soon after, things appeared to go back to square one, when the Minister of Health countered an initiative by the Gauteng Province to roll-out MTCT and was supported by the ANC, which not only called a halt to further roll-outs, but once again opened the debates on the cause of HIV [36]. Then, just 1 month later in another major turn-around, Cabinet issued its wide-ranging statement on AIDS [29] in which, among others, it committed the government to respecting the court rulings on nevirapine, preparing an MTCT prevention roll-out plan as a matter of urgency and making antiretroviral drugs available as post-exposure prophylaxis to rape survivors. Furthermore, Thabo Mbeki formally distanced himself from the dissident scientists [37]. As the issue of MTCT began to threaten the legitimacy of the government, inside and outside South Africa, these seemingly contradictory positions appeared to be manifestations of intense contestation within the state. Not only were increasingly strong views being expressed on the issue within the ANC (including by the former president Nelson Mandela, the ANC's health desk and other ANC ministers in the cabinet), but HIV was at the centre of interactions with the parties and groupings in alliance with the ANC (the trade union federation the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Communist Party and the Inkhatha Freedom Party). Using their autonomy in a quasi-federal system, two provincial governments began MTCT roll-outs despite national disapproval. These internal pressure and the external court process eventually led to the consensus outlined by the Cabinet in April 2002. Conflict as a resource The events around MTCT, relayed on a blow-by-blow basis to the nation and the world by avid media scrutiny, have had a number of political consequences that may ultimately reveal themselves as resources for democracy. There has been a striking degree of public criticism of executive decision-making on the part of all players, within and outside the state. A tendency towards 'solidarity' politics in the ruling class where 'party members in good standing are defended against criticism by outsiders even though they may have broken the moral code of the national community at state level' [38] has been challenged, and the right of social movements outside the formal political alliances of the ANC to participate in the AIDS policy process asserted. Apart from its impact on political practice, the MTCT issue has brought the judiciary into play in meeting the needs of the poor. The Treatment Action Campaign court application in August 2001 was based on the right to health care contained in the Bill of Rights in the new South African Constitution. This right forms part of a broader set of social and economic rights for which the state is required to take 'reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realization of each of these rights' [39]. The eventual ruling by the Constitutional Court is seen as setting a precedent in clarifying the extent to which it can intervene in executive decision-making on social policy. On the contrary, despite a series of judgments against it, the executive has shown its repsect for the independence of the judiciary by rapidly countering a suggestion (made on one occasion by the Minister of Health) that one of the court rulings on nevirapine would not be heeded, and by repeatedly reiterating its intention to implement the decisions of the courts. If the political battles have created confusion in the minds of ordinary citizens and delayed necessary action, the effects on AIDS may not all be negative. The intense coverage of the issues has brought AIDS to the centre of national consciousness, and the growing link being made between HIV and broader socio-economic rights can only benefit the society's ability to deal with it in the long term. However, in the discourse around AIDS and in the frequent reference to issues of race, promiscuity and conspiracy, lies a set of unresolved tensions that are likely to resurface. Race and conspiracy As with ill-health generally, AIDS in South Africa is a highly unequal phenomenon, reflecting the gradients of racial advantage under apartheid [40]. Openly racist interpretations of the AIDS epidemic that were common in the apartheid era [41,42] now continue in deeply held stereotypes of African sexuality as violent and uncontrolled [43]. Intellectuals such as Frantz Fanon [44] have pointed out that such assumptions allow the West to create a self-image and identity of purity against the 'degenerate other' of Africa. Mbeki was no doubt referring to this, in his speech to (largely black) university students in October 2001, when he said: 'Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust' [45]. Racism in AIDS is just one part of the daily reality faced by black people in South Africa. Eight years after the political transition, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world [46]. While the de-racialization of the state and civil service has permitted the rapid growth of a black middle class, social and economic privilege is still heavily concentrated in the hands of the white population [47]. A focus on AIDS through the lens of racial experience thus forms part of a general shift in the national political language from the Mandela era of reconciliation, to the Mbeki era in which widening social inequalities have to be both explained and confronted [20]. In Africa, discourses of persecution and conspiracy linked to AIDS, whether by the pharmaceutical industry, medical researchers or Westerners, have not been unusual, where they have been dismissed as a kind of post-colonial complex without factual grounding [48]. However, in the case of South Africa, not far back in people's memories is a long tradition of racial public health that included many attempts, for example, to control African fertility, both legally [49] and illegally. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings revealed a covert Chemical and Biological Warfare Program intended to eliminate black leaders and to create infertility among black people [50]. It should not, therefore, come as a surprise that the experience of AIDS is interpreted in the light of past suspicion. The position of the President can thus be seen as an attitude of defiance towards official scientific knowledge, a deliberate act to challenge established truths of AIDS, whether biological or social, and an identification with those on the margins, whether of science or society. Such heterodoxy takes place often on behalf of Africa and within the framework of the ideological model of African Renaissance, emphasizing the necessity for the black continent to find its own solutions to its own problems [51]. This was the context of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel and its key question: 'Why is AIDS heterosexually transmitted in sub-Saharan Africa, while it is largely homosexually transmitted in the Western world?' [52]. Although this could be taken as a desire to assert a distance between 'African' sexuality and 'Western' homosexuality [16], the direction of inquiry is guided by another of the terms of reference in which panelists were asked to consider 'Prevention of HIV/AIDS, particularly in the light of poverty, the prevalence of co-existing diseases and infrastructural realities in developing countries'. AIDS in Africa is thus located in a specific social and economic reality, than in the of both is a resistance to the of African and the desire to alternative for the very often in the of These pre-occupations point to an international silence in AIDS research on the reasons for the of the epidemic in Africa, and for its in Africa. The of HIV in South Africa a series of HIV beyond a degree of we have of the reasons for the A by African with and HIV prevalence that could not account for epidemiological the reality is that AIDS in Africa is still with a of and a by the global of a rights discourse in such as the International Partnership Against AIDS in Africa and the of AIDS held in 2001. These reduce the problem to the of and reduce the response to This is in the view that the to control AIDS in from governments to own the problem of AIDS and to implement internationally is a of the social, economic and of the which could not only the reasons for the of AIDS in Africa and the large within the but also to suggest appropriate Such responses are likely to African for the epidemic in a context of local and global a better by AIDS activists in the past few In the case of South Africa, more than a of racial overt has the of the through economic of social and of and While in the earlier years of the epidemic there were at a of AIDS in Africa as points out has been is an that biological and social data into an of the social context of HIV in In other a social that on both social and the field of inequalities research in public health from the reality of Africa and from the of Thabo Mbeki, these may themselves be seen as a denial of justice.