Ancestors and Antiretrovirals: The Biopolitics of HIV/AIDS in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Mbeki attempted to resolve the postcolonial paradox and win political support by dismissing international public health's "modem" biomedical approach as racist, imperialist, and driven by pharmaceutical profit-seeking, while promoting "traditional" indigenous healing as an African alternative for an African disease. Biomedical citizenship, Decoteau argues, accompanied state provision of antiretrovirals, conditioning the rights of citizens to life-saving therapy on their demonstration of behaviors considered necessary for successful treatment, including rejection of indigenous healing (p. 137).