Televising Treatment: The Political Struggle for Antiretrovirals on South African Television

Abstract

Siyayinqoba/Beat It! is an activist-aligned television programme first broadcast on South African national television in 1999. This article documents how Beat It! used the educative power of television to demystify HIV treatment and generate support for public access to antiretroviral medicines (ARVs). It seeks to address gaps in scholarship about the historical representation of HIV in the South African media, and explores how Beat It!'s earliest critique was directed at the profiteering of pharmaceutical corporations, in reflection of the struggle of HIV treatment activists against the exorbitant cost of branded ARVs. This article also examines Beat It!'s broadcast of the activist struggle against the state's refusal to roll-out a public programme for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Through its galvanising portrayals of the imperatives of HIV treatments, Beat It! encouraged viewers to fight for public access.