Africa Today

By outlining the political context that shaped the development of AIDS policy in South Africa and highlighting the deeply political aspects of the AIDS crisis, this paper shows why the South African government has not effectively responded to the spread of AIDS. It questions conventional factors, such as wealth, bureaucratic capacity, regime type, and political leadership as explanations for effective government responsiveness to the pandemic. A long-term, effective response to AIDS in South Africa has been hampered by institutional constraints as a result of the legacies of apartheid, democratic restructuring, inappropriate and authoritarian patterns of political leadership, and the dominance of neoliberalism, domestically and internationally.