Media need to get to grips with issues, not just events
A large media fuss was made over the South African government’s initial refusal to accredit the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the Aids Law Project ahead of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (UNGASS), and then the subsequent grudging invitation to the TAC and the TAC’s refusal of it. But comparatively little has been written about what impact civil society might have at the upcoming assembly.
UNGASS’s goal is to review progress in the implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS made by the UN General Assembly in June 2001. The lengthy declaration contains some strong pledges in areas of prevention, treatment and leadership.
At the assembly in 2001, “The Honourable Mantombazana Tshabala-Msimang” delivered a statement supporting the declaration:
“Needless to say, the millions already infected and affected cry for care and support now. We need to move with a greater sense of urgency – all of us!”
Five years later, the UN wants to know what South Africa has done for the millions that were crying for care and support. So the government has prepared a progress report, which the TAC calls “an inaccurate, rosy view of South Africa’s response to the HIV epidemic”.
The Joint Civil Society Monitoring Forum (JCSMF), a grouping of concerned NGOs and academic organisations, for instance, noted in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on April 6, the exclusion of “substantial and important data and statistics relating to but not limited to HIV mortality, HIV prevalence, TB and HIV incidence, total number of patients receiving ARV treatment and the omission of ARV treatment targets”.
JCSMF also said civil society was hardly consulted during the development of the progress report. Only one “hastily convened” meeting was held by the Department of Health to discuss the draft report, and comments by civil society on it were ignored, according to JCSMF.
In summary, the report is a whitewash, which has prompted the TAC to hand its own report to Annan.
Reported the Sunday Independent:
“The president, minister of health and other government officials have on numerous occasions conducted themselves unfittingly in the response to the HIV epidemic, abused their power and obstructed the response to the epidemic. They continue to do so,” the TAC says in the report handed to Annan.
What influence civil society and the “shadow” country reports will have at the assembly remains to be seen. IRINnews.org reported last week that the role of civil society at the main event is limited:
Paul Roux of the Kidzpositive Family Fund, a Cape Town-based NGO, expressed doubts about the value of attending when the agenda appeared to offer few opportunities for civil society participation.
“I think they’re inviting us to pay lip service to the idea that they’re consulting with civil society,” he said. “But it sounds like the vast majority of us will be sitting up in a gallery somewhere, watching other people talk.”
“Essentially, the negotiations about what’s going to happen at UNGASS are happening now and African organisations are not in a position to fly to New York now, so by the time they arrive, other than the importance of being on the scene to garner media attention, they’re not going to make a difference, other than on a symbolic level,” Sisonke Msimang of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, told IRINnews.
The fight between the TAC and the Department of Health over accreditation was an important story to tell. It’s likely the sustained media pressure on the issue had a part to play in the Department of Health’s partial backdown in inviting one TAC official to join the delegation.
But it was also an easy story to tell, as many conflict-based stories are. What may be challenging to report is how this widening gap between civil society and government is affecting South Africa’s response to the epidemic. How do civil society and government work together in other countries? Why is the South African government’s relationship with certain parts of civil society so poor, and is there a way out of this mess?
Events-based journalism is all-too-easy and all-too-forgettable. What we need in South Africa is good, investigative reporting on HIV/AIDS that gets to grips with issues that are the underlying currents of our society, and are ultimately far more powerful and important than tiffs over meeting invitations. – Richard Frank