This paper explores how a community-based HIV prevention programme based in the peri-urban townships of Cape Town was ‘translated’ to peri-urban Johannesburg and considers the varying impact of homophobic stigma on HIV prevention programmes among men who have sex with men. The Ukwazana programme, in Cape Town’s peri-urban townships, worked in collaboration with a team of township volunteers or ‘ambassadors’, who were themselves men who have sex with other men, to uncover and confront community-level factors associated with sexual risk taking. Programme research highlighted a significant association between the experiences of homophobic stigma and likelihood of engaging in condomless sex. In 2012, Zwakalani, a similar programme, started in the peri-urban township locations surrounding Johannesburg. An evaluation at the end of 2013 explored the success (or otherwise) of collaboration with the target population and awareness of local context. Zwakalani found that the participation of men was not so directly tied to the need to address homophobic stigma, and therefore the programme included a small new group of individuals who had been largely absent from Ukwazana – heterosexual men who undertook the same outreach activities as ambassadors who were men who had sex with men. Interviewees in Johannesburg described the need to engage as broad a cohort of men as possible with the programme and to challenge homophobic stigma by helping create dialogue with the wider community. The different paths taken by the two programmes can be understood in terms of the interface between sexual minorities and heterosexual majorities, and their power relationships. Ukwazana's ambassadors wished to challenge homophobic stigma themselves (due to its severity) and this became important for their continued participation in the programme. Zwakalani ambassadors did not feel the level of homophobic stigma so directly. By strategically including the active participation of heterosexual men, it also moved away from reinforcing sexual difference. Such a positioning made it easier for diverse groups of men who have sex with men to take part in the programme.1
1. Tucker A, de Swardt G, McIntyre J, et al. How do community-based HIV prevention programmes for men who have sex with men ‘travel’? Lessons from the Ukwazana/Zwakalani journey in South Africa. Culture, Health & Sexuality 2015;online publication, 10 March 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2015.1018948. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2015.1018948#abstract