In 1999, Mark Schoofs wrote an 8-part series on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa for the Village Voice. The series won a Pulitzer prize for international reporting. Also read an interview with Schoofs by Henk Rossouw.
Part 1: The Virus Creates a Generation of Orphans
Part 2: A Tale of Two Brothers
Part 3: Africa Responds: Bereft of medicine and money, traditional cultures mobilize in a new way.
Part 4: The Virus, Past and Future; There Are Two AIDS Epidemics — - and More May Be Coming
Part 5: Death and the Second Sex
Part 6: Ending the Epidemic--African Prostitutes May Play a Crucial Role in Developing an HIV Vaccine
Part 7: Building a Movement on the Ruins of Apartheid — South Africa Acts Up
Part 8: Treating AIDS Without Money — Use What You Have
A Fall of Sparrows, written Nalisha Kalideen and published in The Star, is a three-part series on the lives of two women living in a hospice. It won a Mondi Newspaper Award for Feature Writing in 2003. Also see Research and Events for research on this piece.
A Fall of Sparrows (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3)
Douglas Foster writes a powerful narrative that places the story of a married couple going to get an HIV/AIDS test within the wider context of the pandemic in South Africa.
Unveiling Secrets: HIV testing is vital to South Africa, but it's shaking families. Los Angeles Times.
The story of Bongekile Zulu — a woman whose relationship with her husband changes fundamentally when she tests HIV-positive — is a gutsy narrative delivered by Kerry Cullinan. Also read Cullinan's personal reflection on the story in the Reporting on HIV/AIDS factsheet.
Love in the Time of AIDS. Health-e.
"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power examines South Africa's most prominent AIDS activist in this article originally published in The New Yorker in May 2003."
The AIDS Rebel. The New Yorker.
"In Witness to AIDS - part memoir, part compelling analysis — Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Edwin Cameron grapples with the meaning of HIV/AIDS: for him as he confronts the possibility of lingering death, for all of us in facing up to one of the foremost challenges of our time.
In this intensely personal account of survival, Cameron melds elements of his destitute childhood with his daily duties as one of South Africa's most distinguished judges, while focusing always on the epidemic's central issues — stigma, unjust discrimination, and, most vitally, the life-and-death question of access to treatment.
Cameron's moving memoir of his own survival in an epidemic that has cost millions of lives is insightful and uplifting, sobering and ultimately hopeful. "
Sample Chapter: Chapter 2. Just a virus, just a disease.
Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere visited Lavumisa in Swaziland and described how AIDS was "steadily boring through the heart of this small town" using the personal histories of its inhabitants. The accompanying interactive is equally compelling.
Hut by Hut, AIDS Steals Life in a Southern Africa Town. New York Times.
Interactive Feature: A hollowed African city. New York Times.
An edited version of Henk Rossouw's address he delivered at the 2005 Ruth First Memorial Lecture.
The Truth Needs Time. Mail&Guardian.
Have you come across any good examples of journalism covering HIV/AIDS issues? Please send an email and link, if available online, to kylie.thomas@wits.ac.za
