ABSTRACT
In present-day South Africa, with roughly 5.5 million people living with HIV and AIDS and an infection rate of 16.9% of the adult population, AIDS is arguably the greatest health risk not only for “risk groups” as defi ned in the laboratories of public health discourse but for the population at large.1 With heterosexual intercourse-followed at a distance by mother-to-child-transmission-being the dominant mode of transmission AIDS has rendered intimate and sexual relationships problematic in novel ways; it attaches medical meanings to the sexual act that crosscut ideas of pleasure, romanticism, procreation, and marital union, inscribed into sexual practices in modern culture. While infection because of its terminal consequences is an utterly critical event in itself, its disastrous consequences go beyond the individual experience of illness and eventual death. At some stage AIDS incapacitates people and renders them unable to work and generate income. It is therefore linked to economic insecurity of individuals and families and threatens the capabilities of raising children. What is more, because of the stigma it carries, equally borne from close associations with illegitimate sexual practice and death, AIDS is likely to create depression and isolation, disrupt social ties and undermine the sense of biographical continuity (Burchardt 2010a). For all this, the HIV/AIDS epidemic might appear as one of the major social problems of contemporary South Africa.
