De-Mything Alternative Truths

From the abstract

"Since it's first appearance in Botswana in the mid eighties, HIV/AIDS has attracted a lot of attention, especially from the Government's Ministry of Health. Countless workshops, broadcast media and academic messages have been floating around, in the government and other stake holders' effort to 'sensitise', 'educate', 'empower', the people of Botswana to survive the pandemic. However, despite the commendable efforts, the infection rates have not been significantly arrested. Questions have been asked regarding this situation and resources have been allocated towards the task of understanding and remedying this development, to limited success. The relentlessness of the pandemic is a clear indication that the message that both private and government media is disbursing, of condom use, abstinence and anti-retroviral therapies is not the only one available to people.

By exploring existing narratives of and about HIV/AIDS among ordinary people of the city of Gaborone, Botswana's capital city, this paper seeks to argue for an unrepressive media that promotes other stories. It argues that part of the problem of escalating HIV infection rates in Botswana lies with the fact that it is only official narratives of the pandemic that have been represented in Botswana's private and public radio stations and newspapers, to the exclusion of local experiences and know ledges about the pandemic. I suggest that, this is because the paradigm from which the codes used in the messages are drawn from, is one that is alien to people at the level of day to day decision of health and illness. It is one they know better than to challenge, because of the massive campaign against their 'ignorance' that would result from such open challenge. This has resulted in what I would like to characterise as a superficial hegemony of the HIV/AIDS prevention message. By drawing from a scientific paradigm, one that has erected a wall around itself as 'the undistorted truth', media has closed avenues for open resistance, but as a result has failed to erase the alternative but muted narratives existing that inform people decisions on their sexual and health matters. I therefore make an argument that, unless people's perceptions and stories are included in the myth making process, we run the risk of a 'nationally' celebrated but personally resisted myth, whose very hegemony is the 'myth,' only this time myth in the sense of false."Click here for the full report online.