Social Justice
Social Justice Stories: Journeys to Justice (extended online edition)(2023
This collection is the result of partnership with the SA Schools Debating Board and captures the creative outputs of learners from across South Africa where we asked them to reflect on journeys to justice to shape their contributions.
Social Justice Stories: Viruses, Villains, Victims & Victors (2022)
This collection is the result of partnership with the SA Schools Debating Board and captures the creative outputs of 40 learners from across South Africa where we asked them to reflect on life under Covid, using the terms “viruses, villains, victims and victors” to shape their contributions.
Dis/abling Higher Education in South Africa (2021)
Social Justice Stories: No Longer Silent on GBV (2021)
This collection is the result of partnership with the SA Schools Debating Board and captures the creative outputs of 32 learners from across South Africa on gender-based violence.
Just Leaders (2020)
Just Leaders volunteers reflect on Social Justice and their involvement with the CSA&G.
Social Justice Stories: Young People Reflect on HIV, Sexualities, Gender, Race and Inequality (2020)
This collection is the result of partnership with the SA Schools Debating Board and captures the creative outputs of 24 learners from across Gauteng on HIV, gender, race and inequality.
Gender Justice
When hostility hurts: The mental health effects of criminalising consensual same-sex sexual relations and the efficacy of conversion practices (2023)
This briefing is based on an expert testimony prepared by the Centre for Human Rights (CHR) and the CSA&G at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. The briefing sets out widely accepted medical and psychological knowledge on two key issues. First, the mental health effects of the criminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual relations and, second, whether homosexuality can be treated or cured through counselling or therapy.
Gender and Germs: Unmasking War Frames in South Africa’s Militarised Response to COVID-19 (2021)
In Gender and Germs, Pinheiro and Kiguwa provides a careful, textured analysis of South Africa’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, through an analysis of presidential speeches addressed to the South African public. It thus highlights pivotal moments in the South African political response to this historically significant moment. The authors’ psycho-social and decolonial feminist reading of South Africa’s militarised, hegemonically masculine response to the COVID-19 pandemic is ever timelier in a context in which the gendered inequities illuminated by the pandemic have produced immeasurable difficulties.
Exclusion, objectification, exploitation: gender, sexuality and climate change information services (2021)
In Exclusion, Objectification, Exploitation: Gender, Sexuality and Climate Change Information Services, Dina Lupin Townsend takes as a key focus the idea of knowing, in a critical exploration of the epistemological dimensions related to climate change phenomena. Through a holistic lens, underpinned by the core principles of social justice and feminist epistemologies, knowing is here interrogated not as value-free, but as a cornerstone of equal and fair efforts to find meaningful solutions to global warming.
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered – young men and masculinity (2020)
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered – young men and masculinity by Justice Medzani, is an exploration of how a diverse group of young male identified students at the University of Pretoria feels about maleness and masculinity, and assists us in developing some insights into the challenges young men experience and empathy for their journeys. The report helps to start a conversation about how masculinity feels to this generation of university goers, and to inspire you, the reader, to keep this conversation going.
New Chapters, Old Stories: Developmental Narratives Sustaining Apartheid(s) (2020)
In New Chapters, Old Stories: Developmental Narratives Sustaining Apartheid(s), Elize Soer encourages us to “think with history”, imagining the temporality of political thought as much longer and more pervasive than the commonly accepted historical narratives would have us believe. With her specific focus on the notion of “sustainable development” Soer displays how one could go about thinking with the histories of colonialism and apartheid to link the specific ideologies, or narratives, that underpinned these structures to the present-day sustainable development industry
A magnifying glass and a fine-tooth comb: understanding girls’ and young women’s sexual vulnerability (2020)
A magnifying glass and a fine-tooth comb: understanding girls’ and young women’s sexual vulnerability by Mzikazi Nduna. Research with regard to the sexuality of adolescent girls and young women continues to suggest new approaches for understanding the sexual risks experienced by girls and young women in Southern Africa. Whilst this knowledge base reveals that young women’s life conditions and experiences are sub-optimal, some sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) interventions are designed and delivered with unchecked assumptions. This monograph addresses some of the assumptions underpinning adolescent girls’ and young women’s vulnerability that could be considered when designing and delivering SRHR interventions.
Gendered and Sexual Imagi(nations), the 2018 Zimbabwean E(r)ections and the Aftermath (2019)
Gendered and Sexual Imagi(nations), the 2018 Zimbabwean E(r)ections and the Aftermath by Tinashe Mawere attempts to answer questions that have been central to scholarship within the humanities. Drawing on the concepts which Schneider refers to as the basic building blocks of society, i.e. “the quartet of kinship, economics, politics, and religion”, Mawere explores, on the one hand, the historiography of the Zimbabwean state, specifically the Mugabe era, and the particular ways in which it has been underpinned by a deeply rooted system of patriarchal values. On the other hand, this text asks questions which most authors have shied away from asking. Rather than constructing a perspective which imagines leaders of ZANU-PF and the MDC in natural opposition and fundamentally different because of divergent political visions, Gendered and Sexual Imagi(nations) asks its readers to take note of the commonalities shared by male leaders of these parties, and, in fact, held by most male politicians.
Women in the Context of Justice: Continuities and Discontinuities in Southern Africa (2018)
This Handbook builds on the work of a longer term project on justice and governance practices at community level during periods of transition. This project is particularly interested in the burgeoning endeavour to incorporate community justice practices into transitional justice interventions after mass violence. One of the issues identified is that there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to community justice practices, including the response that such practices are ‘patriarchal’ and ‘gender-biased’, and thus that they need to be abolished.
(Un)knowing MEN: Africanising gender justice programmes for men in South Africa (2018)
In (Un)knowing Men Sakhumzi Mfecane shares his critical reflections on research on men and masculinities in South Africa. In South Africa, he argues, there seems to be an impasse in scholarly accounts of men and masculinities. Old theories do not provide new answers; violence against women, homicide, rape of women and children, and homophobia persist despite heavy financial investments by the government and international NGOs in research, education and activism that seek to end all forms of gender inequality in South Africa. Research and interventions, Mfecane points out, centre on the same goal of subverting patriarchy without putting patriarchy in proper social and historical context.
Gender-based Justice: Reflections on social justice and social change (2017)
This CSA&G monograph is a foundation document to enable discussion about: (i) the history of attempts to bring equity and justice to the fore; (ii) gender, including how the concept has evolved; and (iii) how, despite the fact that we can and do inhabit so many different identities, the fundamental issue is still one of patriarchy and the gender oppression of women and people with alternative sexualities, arising from the desire to make people conform to an overarching gender belonging.
Policy brief: Social justice and gender inequality (2017)
The aim of this Policy Brief is to expand briefly on the topic of Social Justice and how it is relevant to the intersections between HIV and AIDS, gender, gender-based violence and sexualities, providing the reader with a brief background, an examination of key issues and setting out challenges for those working in the field.
Human Rights
UNDP Compendium of key documents relating to human rights and HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa (2008)
Compendium of key documents relating to human rights and HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa. Commissioned by UNDP, Regional Service Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa. Researched and edited by the AIDS and Human Rights Research Unit, Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender and Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria.
UNDP Guide to an effective human rights response to the HIV epidemic (2007)
Guide to an effective human rights response to the HIV epidemic – Using international human rights law to shape national law in Eastern and Southern Africa. Commissioned by UNDP, Regional Service Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa. Researched and edited by the AIDS and Human Rights Research Unit, Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender and Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria.
HIV and Education
Integrating HIV and AIDS into the curriculum at the University of Pretoria: Time for transformation? (2016)
This study set out to explore whether and how HIV and AIDS have been integrated into curricula at UP over the past 15 years and what the future of HIV curriculum integration (HCI) might be. Recent student protests served to challenge the relevance of HCI, and emphasise the importance of considering how best to approach HCI, and how to relate HCI to issues such as power, race, gender and institutional culture.
Education: the forgotten side of prevention
Presentation by Mary Crewe at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto in 2006.
A pep-talk too far
A pep-talk too far: Reflections on the power of AIDS education. Plenary presentation by Mary Crewe at the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok 2004.
HIV-related Stigma
HIV/AIDS Stigma Resource Pack (2006)
HIV/AIDS Stigma Resource Pack produced by the CSA&G’s Siyam’kela Project (2006).
Righting Stigma (2005)
Righting Stigma: Exploring a rights-based to addressing stigma (Viljoen, F. ed.)
ARV Adherence Resources
Flagging Adherence: social and structural realities of adult ART adherence in South Africa (2017)
Although South Africa has the largest cohort worldwide initiated onto ART, we need to ask whether adequate attention has been given to ensuring long-term adherence to treatment. If the South African ART programme is to achieve the declared goal of the South African National Department of Health (i.e. to end the HIV epidemic by 2030), then – poor adherence to ART – must be recognised and addressed. The focus of this monograph is primarily on how social and structural factors shape and sustain the HIV epidemic, including their influence on adherence, and the implication of this for promoting adherence. We argue that dominant ways of thinking about adherence may themselves be problematic and we suggest alternative approaches.
Kids Count: Children’s Adherence Resource Pack – guide for trainers
Kids Count: Children’s ART Adherence Resource Pack – Guide for Trainers. Equipping people involved in ART for children with the relevant skills to provide effective adherence counselling (2006, revised 2011).
Kids Count: Children’s Adherence Resource Pack
Resources to strengthen capacity to facilitate adherence to ART amongst those involved in the planning, provision and support of ART interventions in children. 2006 (revised 2011).
Adherence Resource Pack
The Adherence Resource Pack for ART adherence counselling and support as developed by the Adherence Networking Group (2005).
AIDS Review Series
AIDS Review 2013: Nostalgia
This AIDS Review, Nostalgia (by Relebohile Moletsani), is concerned with precisely those representations with which we are confronted in our work in HIV and AIDS, in development studies, in the reports of donors and of those who have undertaken research, and by people who have responded to being the subjects of research. This Review is about nostalgia, but it is also about representations.
Who is represented, and how, and by whom, and to what end? How do those who are represented respond? Do they accept these images, and how do they respond? This Review is also about representations and silences.
This Review confronts the uneasy relationship between the North and the South, between those who conceive of our problems, who find the funds to conduct research on and explain us, and who write us up, and those whose lives and experiences are expropriated in this way. How do we find the language for the cultural and imagined past, the power of tradition and memory, and the ways in which belief and belonging shaped who we are today, without the legitimacy of this being called into question or studied? How do we write about and protect indigenous knowledge, beliefs in the mysterious powers of ancestors and witchcraft, and merge this with a new and vibrant society?
Extraordinary AIDS Review: Third Degree (2013)
Third Degree is a collaboration between HAICU, based at the University of Cape Town, and the CSA&G, based at the University of Pretoria. These two organisations are committed to finding ways to understand and explain the HIV and AIDS epidemics, and to determining how tertiary institutions and the wider society may come to address and act on the many complex and fascinating social, moral, political, economic and educational issues that the epidemics raise.
AIDS Review 2012: Off Label
In this Review – Off Label by Jonathan Stadler and Eirik Saethre – the experience of participants in a microbicide trial is analysed, operating from the idea that “as condoms and gels are employed (or not employed) in people’s everyday lives, these technologies acquire their own unique signification. These meanings and explanations are ‘off label’ in that while the health care professionals believe that the ways in which a trial will unfold and be experienced is based on how well the professionals understand the trial and the participants, it is the participants who take the intervention, interpret it, transform it, accept or reject it. Participants use trials to re-define themselves as knowledgeable participants, and to assert their individuality and choice.
AIDS Review 2011: (B)order(s)
(B)order(s) by Vasu Reddy, reflects on the borders that have been placed around sexual identity, sexual behaviour and sexuality. It also reflects on the need for sexual order in the dominant hetero-normative discourse of most societies, where heterosexuality is deemed to be the norm and all other sexual identities and practices the exception to this rule, to be tolerated, albeit in a strained and tense way.
AIDS Review 2009: Magic
Magic AIDS Review 2009 by Fraser G. McNeill & Isak Niehaus,challenges the all-too-easy assumption that testing and treatment ‘normalises’ the disease and reduces HIV- and AIDS-related stigma. Magic seeks to address the influences in people’s lives that affect their response to antiretroviral treatments, i.e. what drives adherence or treatment failure? What are the factors that come into play in the complex lives of individuals and families, and how do these influences find a place in the multiple community networks that people inhabit?
AIDS Review 2008: Balancing Acts
Balancing Acts AIDS Review 2008, by Carmel Rickard. How do we best understand what works, how do we estimate and measure the social cost, quite apart from the economic and political costs, and how do we strike the balance between the imperatives of public health on the one hand and the imperatives of human rights on the other?
AIDS Review 2007: Stigma(ta)
Stigma(ta) AIDS Review 2007 by Patrick Eba offers a comprehensive overview of HIV and AIDS-related stigma and why it remains so pervasive in all societies. The strength of HIV and AIDS stigma challenges many of the beliefs people have held about AIDS and stigma. Except in a few individual cases, some communities and a couple of countries, these beliefs have not been borne out.
AIDS Review 2006: Bodies count
Bodies count AIDS Review 2006 by Jonathan Jansen discusses the role of education and the response of the educational system to HIV and AIDS. It has long been believed that schools were one of the most effective places to address HIV and AIDS. Indeed AIDS education in schools has often been referred to as a ‘social vaccine’ equipping young people with a lifetime protection against infection and giving them the means to develop and sustain sexual behaviour that will not carry the risk of infection.
Extraordinary AIDS Review, Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa 2005
Extraordinary AIDS Review- Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa 2005 by Hein Marais, takes a critical look at how we should be measuring the impact of HIV and AIDS on South Africa. What have we learned from our past, from the ways in which we have described and understood the epidemic and from the ways in which we have chosen to analyze and interpret its impact? Can a society such as South Africa come to terms with the impact of AIDS and generate a brave, vibrant and robust response? Can we understand the lessons of the past and create a future that protects and supports us all as we negotiate our way through this most fascinating of all epidemics and the many social, political, economic and personal ramifications it will produce?
AIDS Review 2005: What’s Cooking
What’s Cooking: AIDS Review 2005 by Jimmy Pieterse and Barry van Wyk, focuses on the impact of HIV and AIDS on agriculture and the politics of food access and production. The Review employs an historical perspective in grappling with these issues, and argues that the effects of HIV/AIDS and those of food insecurity are best understood when one takes into account the specifics of the historical development of South Africa’s political economy and especially the development of the agricultural sector.
AIDS Review 2004: (Un) Real
(Un)Real AIDS Review 2004, by Kgamadi Kometsi addresses the ways in which this epidemic has positioned men and the crucial roles that men can play in the social and political responses to HIV and AIDS. We address the construction of male identities and ‘maleness’ and the ways in which masculinities and male sexuality has been understood. For too long ‘gender’ has looked mainly at the position of women in society, addressing women and young girls in ways that position them negatively in relation to the rest of society through descriptions of vulnerability, of powerlessness and of being oppressed by men who have been placed centrally as the major problem in HIV and AIDS.
AIDS Review 2003: (Over) extended
AIDS Review 2003: (Over) extended by Vanessa Barolsky. This Review asks the question: how does the epidemic impact on families and the personal relationships between family members – between partners, between husbands and wives, between parents and their children and between siblings? We ask the question as to how the (over)extended family will cope with this epidemic and how social and community structures might be able to find creative new ways to look after families living with HIV and AIDS, as well as people living with HIV and AIDS, and how social and community support can be developed in innovative and creative ways.
AIDS Review 2002: Whose right?
Whose Right? AIDS Review 2002, by Chantal Kisoon, Mary Caeser and Tashia Jithoo, situates HIV/AIDS within the broad field of human rights and of stigma, prejudice and discrimination. Its focus is broadly the Southern African region and looks at the complex relationship between HIV/AIDS and human rights and the implications this has for an effective AIDS response.
AIDS Review 2001: Who cares?
Who Cares? AIDS Review 2001, by Tim Trengove Jones looks at the levels of commitment and care – in the international community, in Africa and in South Africa.We have asked the question “Who cares?” both in the sense of how we should think about care and commitment,and whether – beyond the rhetoric – we care at all.
AIDS Review 2000: To the edge
To the edge: AIDS Review 2000 by Hein Marais, tries to answer the complex question as to why, despite the comprehensive National AIDS Plan adopted in 1994, South Africa has what has been described as the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world. It tries to discover what forces shaped the response to the epidemic and how these have operated over time.
Counselling Resources
Counselling theory and practice in South Africa (Facilitator’s Manual)
A ten-day training course developed by Claudia da Rocha Kustner in collaboration with Saranne Meyersfeld, Pierre Brouard and the Adherence Networking Group, Funded by ANOVA Health
Counselling theory and practice in South Africa (Participants’ Manual)
A ten-day training course developed by Claudia da Rocha Kustner in collaboration with Saranne Meyersfeld, Pierre Brouard and the Adherence Networking Group, Funded by ANOVA Health.
About the CSA&G Press – an imprint of the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender at the University of Pretoria
The CSA&G has published many high quality, innovative and influential publications since 2000 on its own and in collaboration with its many partners. The CSA&G established the CSA&G Press as an imprint in 2018 to formalise and strengthen its publication processes and outputs. The decision to establish the CSA&G Press was further informed by the paucity of high-quality publications in the fields of critical sexualities and gender studies that are published in Africa and the ‘south’.
All CSA&G Press publications go through rigorous peer review processes prior to publication. Information about this publication’s peer review process is available on the publication information page of each publication (where applicable).