THE CONCEPTION OF THE BATTLE AGAINST HIV IN SOUTH AFRICA - A Critical Discourse Analysis of Speeches by Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma

Abstract: In the past decade South Africa has enrolled the biggest antiretroviral treatment programme (ARV) in the world to treat HIV/AIDS. The country has had a hard time to deal with the disease for a long time, however, now seems to make progress in combatting the disease and even sets an example for other countries in the world in how to deal with the disease. How the country has been battling this disease and in what way this is represented in the speeches from the former presidents of the country, is what is at the core of this paper. Messages from Mandela (1994), Mbeki (200) and Zuma (2009, 2014) will be analysed with the help of critical discourse analysis. The theoretical works of Van Leeuwen (2007), who focusses on legitimation and Schröter (2018), engaging with silence and absence in discourse are the main points of departure for the qualitative analysis that will be conducted on these texts. Resulting in revealing how marginalisation through stigmatisation, denialist discourse and scientific discourse have been legitimised in these speeches.