ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have already alluded to the maladies of inaction and failed intervention that have exacerbated the South African epidemic. in the early 1980s, when the first two AiDS deaths were recorded in South Africa, the apartheid government failed to acknowledge the risk HiV posed to the general population, presenting it as an affliction limited to the fringes of society. Their response to evidence that the epidemic was making a heterosexual transition followed a similar route as they continued to assure the white public they were not at risk as HiV affected mostly the black population. To their minds this eliminated the need for further government intervention. Towards the end of the 1980s government began to acknowledge the epidemic, publically announcing plans to counter it. However, these promises failed to translate into action, overshadowed by the liberation struggle.
