“Fanon's no-man's land”: The difficult inheritance of anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa's HIV/AIDS literature

Abstract

Assessing the contribution made by recent literature dealing with HIV/AIDS in South Africa, this essay considers the influence of the tradition of anti-apartheid struggle on writers on both sides of the denialism controversy. A close reading of Roshila Nair's poem, “Fanon's land”, attends to her hesitation to apply straightforwardly the received forms and idioms of South African literary dissidence in dealing with HIV/AIDS as topic. Nair's unease sets her apart from many other writers who have written on the subject; readings are offered of texts aligned with the Treatment Action Campaign, and of Castro Hlongwane, South Africa's primary denialist document. On both sides, a recuperation of the liberationist rhetoric of popular anti-governmental antagonism is shown to impair – conceptually and aesthetically – attempts by writers to reckon with the HIV/AIDS crisis. Nair's conception of South Africa as “Fanon's no-man's land” is analysed, extrapolating a critique of the relation between viral and capital systems that is shown to lurk throughout the national literature on HIV/AIDS.

Keywords:

• HIV/AIDS
• literature
• Roshila Nair
• Thabo Mbeki
• anti-apartheid struggle