a political economy of south african AIDS:
The larger problem, however, is not just that the cost of anti-retroviral drugs like AZT has hampered treatment. It is, I want to argue, that the class/race/gender character of South African health and social policy under conditions of a failing free-market (known here as "neo-liberal") economic strategy is inhibiting prevention.
(...) The US vice president conducted a "full-court press"--in the words of a rabid US State Department official bragging to Congress in a February 1999 report--against Mbeki to drop the "offending language" in the Medicines Act. The pressure included various punitive trade and aid measures. South Africa's crime was not only its 1997 law, but also advocacy of similar global provisions in the form of a mid-ranking health official's 1999 speech to the World Health Organisation. Not only did Gore directly assault South Africa's ability to conduct economic policy-making and cheapen vitally-needed medicines, he was now also attacking the newly-democratized government's freedom of speech in international fora! Two crucial reasons seemed to motivate Gore: the broad principle that US companies with intellectual property rights should not concede any exception to their product hegemony; and campaign contributions by major pharmaceutical firms.
(...) The poli-econ of AIDS points out the need for a yet more profound struggle against the underlying assumptions and characteristics of South African-- and international--capitalism.