Joint Oxfam HIV/AIDS Program (JOHAP) - South Africa

Partnership with community-based and non-governmental organisations (CBOs and NGOs, respectively) is the key programme strategy. While capacity building is the primary approach, policy advocacy addressing human rights and good governance is also central because of its impact on policy and practice at a provincial level.

JOHAP provides both funding and non-financial technical support to partner organisations. The latter includes support for incorporating HIV/AIDS into the ongoing work of existing Oxfam partner organisations in South Africa; support for planning, monitoring, and evaluation; and assistance with the development of behavioural change interventions. Secondary strategies include direct advocacy and management and leadership to ensure that projects are implemented in a cost-effective and accountable way.

During the first phase of the project, local partner organisations were supported in three main areas:

• Service delivery that emphasised prevention and used a very specific behaviour change intervention approach.
• Capacity building to support local partner organisations and to encourage networking with other non-HIV/AIDS organisations in an effort to impact the quality and reach of the response.
• Advocacy and lobbying to support organisations working on governance and human rights related to HIVAIDS.

Much of this work revolved around the use of HIV/AIDS peer educators. For example, two local partners - the Centre for Positive Care (CPC) and the Tivoneleni Vavasati AIDS Awareness Project (TVAAP) - sponsor the travel of groups of women, most of whom are former sex workers, to various communities to sing and pray (in call-and-response style) with the message of "community against AIDS". These women also care for AIDS patients, visit clinics and townships, and distribute condoms. Another medium is street theatre in the form of plays exploring issues like alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and HIV/AIDS - all of which end in a question-and-answer session with the audience and condom distribution.

JOHAP's second three-year phase involves focussing more specifically on strengthening both the quality and the cohesion of the civil society response to HIV/AIDS. JOHAP will support partners whose approach to the prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) highlights gender and sexuality issues, with a particular focus on young people, in the following areas: the development, documentation, and dissemination of good practice in HIV/AIDS work; and the creation of an enabling environment for the civil society response to HIV/AIDS, with a particular emphasis on the rights of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDS, Gender, Youth, Children, Women, Reproductive Health, Rights.

Since 1998 CPC has given out over two million condoms. Participants in the CPC project described above are encouraged to lead by example. Whereas at the beginning of the project the women were not allowed to enter people's homes, organisers claim that they have have become people of high status in their communities and in the communities they visit.

In South Africa, one in five adults live with HIV. While South Africa has the world's highest number of HIV-positive people, the lag between acquiring the virus and getting sick, along with the lack of testing or treatment facilities, means that many people do not know their HIV status. Despite the growing numbers of deaths, organisers claim that silence, denial, and stigma mean that many sick people lack the support of their communities and families. Organisers also point out that sex work, one of the few options for poor women during times of high unemployment, is a major factor in the spread of AIDS, especially because men will often pay more for unprotected sex. Labour migration is another factor: men often have other partners in the city. Poverty, unemployment, gender inequality, and illiteracy also make people more vulnerable to AIDS, in turn increasing people's poverty. There are predictions of one million South African AIDS orphans by 2005; organisers claim that there are few resources for AIDS orphans, even in the region's wealthiest country.