Ancestors and antiretrovirals: The biopolitics of HIV/AIDS in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This monograph examines the South African AIDS epidemic from different angles, including sociological analysis and fieldwork in informal settlements outside Johannesburg. Decoteau aims to explore interactions between global, national and local processes, and show the failure of biomedicine to address the underlying causes of AIDS. She situates the epidemic at a paradoxical moment, marked by democratisation and neoliberal economic restructuring. Decoteau views the ANC government’s GEAR policies as a homegrown version of structural adjustment, and suggests that African nationalist leaders desired for the country to prosper on the market without being dependent upon western nations. Despite ANC hegemony, the poor express political opposition through thousands of spontaneous service delivery protests.