ABSTRACT
Amidst the unrelenting catalogue of horrors – the prediction by the United Nations of a possible 60 million additional deaths worldwide, 50 million of them in Africa by the year 2025; the ghastly findings that the epidemic is still in its early stages overall – must be added the real possibility that with HIV/AIDS the very survival of the African state may well be at stake. Often in conditions of extreme poverty, conflict, weak institutional and physical infrastructure, deficient educational and health care systems; many societies are struggling with the epidemic in ways that is changing the very character of everyday life. If to this is added the demographic effects of the epidemic, then there is every reason to suppose that AIDS may well be the deciding factor in shaping the body politics in many societies on the continent.
