Abstract
The vast majority of HIV and AIDS cases are located in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS constitutes a critical threat to the development of South Africa, yet the response to date has been slow and often confused. The research of ‘Deco’ is examined to outline how the company approached HIV/AIDS. Deco’s policies encouraged voluntary testing and counselling, openness and disclosure. Different HIV/AIDS programme aspects that responded in a reactive and under-resourced way and lacking access to managerial structures, had the opposite results. The very real value of AIDS volunteers’ contribution, is then described and evaluated. A new approach from both management and employees is needed in which a co-ordinated division of responsibility forms a key element in a workplace partnership to combat HIV/AIDS.
Highlights
AIDS presents a major challenge to the creation of a prosperous South Africa in which all citizens are able to fulfil their potential
According to the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (Sabcoha) (2002), the majority of companies have yet to assess the risk within their own workforces, let alone begin to mount a response to this risk
Other Deco divisions and business units had lower estimated risk profiles than the company’s mining operations – ranging from a few percent for professional workplaces such as the company’s head office, to the mid-teens for workplaces where larger numbers of low-skilled workers were employed. In these latter workplaces it appears that the visibility of HIV/AIDS had been masked by the decentralised nature of health care and the absence of annual health checks
Summary
AIDS presents a major challenge to the creation of a prosperous South Africa in which all citizens are able to fulfil their potential. With the exception of the Eskom ‘best practice case study’ (Department of Health, 1999) most reports on companies’ responses to HIV/AIDS have either been corporate publications written with public relations in mind (for example, Anglo Gold, 2002), or critiques written largely from an outside perspective (for example, Meeson, 2000; Meeson & van Meelis, 2000) These sources of information are important and are to be welcomed, but they are limited in their ability to tease out the actual problems of implementation – policy vs practice – in a way that will help improve workplace responses[2]. This paper draws on independent research within ‘Deco,’ a large South African corporation It examines the interplay of official policies on HIV/AIDS and the actual practices of HIV/AIDS programmes, thereby providing lessons on the implementation of HIV/AIDS programmes in the workplace.
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