The Bloemhof incident: Affirmative action on death row

Siphokazi Magadla

Siphokazi Magadla, Al Jazeera

A water crisis in South Africa's northwestern town of Bloemhof has led to the deaths of three infants and scores of children and adults admitted to hospital for severe diarrhoea. Preliminary results indicate that the area's main reservoir was contaminated with the E. Coli bacteria which causes diarrhoea due to a sewage spillage. The town's mayor has since been fired by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the municipal manager has resigned, and a task team composed of members of the provincial executive committee and the water and sanitation department has been set up to investigate the tragedy.

Richard Ballard's Talk at the Launch of Mandisa Mbali’s ‘South African AIDS Activism and Global Health Politics'

In this post, we share Prof Richard Ballard’s comments on Dr Mandisa Mbali’s new book, ‘South African AIDS Activism and Global Health Politics’. Richard gave this review speech at the launch of the book in Durban last month.  In addition to providing a commentary on Mandisa’s work, Richard provides some insightful reflections on the study of social movements, which have a wider relevance in South Africa and beyond. Richard Ballard is Professor in the Department of Population Studies and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal. Mandisa Mbali  is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Stellenbosch. 

Democracy in Africa

“A failed man”: Mark Hunter’s Love in the Time of AIDS — a must read

Zackie Achmat, Writing Rights

Mark Hunter’s Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender and Rights in South Africa provides the most rigorous analysis of the HIV epidemic that I have read. Revolutionary in its approach, Hunter’s account of the HIV epidemic interrogates the practices and impact of intimacy, sex and marriage over time through political economy and anthropology. He shows an inextricable link between the collapse of apartheid and the male-led household in Mandeni industrial township and Hlabisa’s rural villages in KwaZulu-Natal where adult HIV prevalence approached 40%.

Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa

by Mark Hunter, 2010

“ Beautifully, powerfully, and movingly written. The best analysis I have seen not only of the reasons for the HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa, but of its wider socioeconomic, cultural, and political dynamics.”

– Shula Marks, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

“One of the most exceptional studies of the response to HIV and AIDS.” – Richard Parker, Columbia University

In some parts of South Africa, more than one in three people are HIV positive. Love in the Time of AIDS explores transformations in notions of gender and intimacy to try to understand the roots of this virulent epidemic.