ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS is the quintessential other. At a biological level, it disguises itself as a retrovirus and weakens the immune system’s resistance to opportunistic diseases. Many people, particularly in the South, die of AIDS without ever knowing that they are infected. At a social level, AIDS was initially associated with the ‘homosexual and drug-using other’ and later with marginalized groups such as sex workers and migrant workers. Its associations with ‘suspect’ moral conduct and, in Africa, with bewitchment, create stigma, silence and secrecy around the disease. This is refl ected in language where all sorts of distancing euphemisms and conspiracy-laden acronyms confi rm the otherness of the disease (Sontag 1990). At the macro-political level, AIDS is the other in relation to South Africa’s fl edgling democracy, threatening to roll back the socio-political and economic gains of the post-apartheid era by sapping government resources and destabilizing social structures.
