ABSTRACT
In most accounts of the history of AIDS activism in South Africa, the case of AIDS denialism and the fight against the expansion of antiretroviral therapy (ART) stands out as the signature South African case of local resistance to global public health intervention. This chapter focuses on local resistance to global biomedical discourse and practice specifically relate to approaches to public health maintenance. It considers two cases where local communities and health activists have instead demanded global intervention but resisted the ways in which those interventions have conventionally been implemented. The arguments in the chapter emerge from the experiences of two significant health social movements in South Africa - the above-mentioned fight for access to ART, and the recent 'shit politics' that has coalesced around local struggles to improve sanitation and security in the country's poorest communities.
