An Epidemic Waiting to Happen? The Spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa in Social and Historical Perspective

There can be few more vital issues confronting Southern Africa than the pandemic of HIV and AIDS currently ravaging the sub-continent. The paper is an attempt to place the spread of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa in general and South Africa in particular in both its historical and social context. Yet what can an historian say about the AIDS pandemic? Our normal recourse is to look to the historians for the lessons of history both in order to see the epidemic in some kind of perspective and to learn from past policy prescriptions. But the lessons of history are not always so easily read. Humanity has rarely learnt from them and when it has it has frequently learnt the wrong lessons. And while there have been many epidemics in history none has had quite the same configuration as the last. Nevertheless I think history gives us a way of looking at the present. There are no simple answers but the value of historical analogy in challenging dominant preconceptions locating contemporary reactions in context and enabling a sense of perspective remains important. (excerpt)