Siyayinqoba Beat It! Archive

The Siyayinqoba Beat It! HIV/AIDS Archive will ensure the conservation of the single most comprehensive audio-visual resource on the science of HIV/AIDS and the history of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

About the Archive

The archive draws from two organisational legacies, that of the Community Media Trust (CMT) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The distinct missions of the two organisations are inextricably linked by a specific socio-political and health context that has informed the objectives of both organisations, resulting in a partnership which is made evident in the audio visual footage captured by the CMT since 1998, the year in which both organisations were founded.

The Siyayinqoba Beat It! HIV/AIDS Archive aims to conserve this material in order to facilitate and promote future research and programming on HIV/AIDS and the socio-political impact and response to the pandemic. Research will however extend beyond a specific focus on HIV/AIDS as it will be invaluable in research around successful social movements, active citizenship, the entrenchment of democracy, the use of law, the prioritising of human rights and the creation of principled leadership. CHMT's privileged access to the TAC network across South Africa, also means that the archive will also house the extraordinary personal stories of triumph over adversity and disease which has formed the core of the Siyayinqoba Beat It! series' content.

FEATURED ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE

Zweli Mkhize 2008 TAC National Congress

Community Health Media Trust would like to congratulate Zweli Mkhize on his appointment as the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal. Zweli Mkhize has long been a supporter of people's right to health and has spoken at both the 2002 Treat the People congress and the 2008 TAC National Congress.

You can read the full transcript of his speech at the 2008 TAC National Congress here.

The definitive South African HIV/AIDS Timeline

The magnitude of the footage that will be made available through the Siyayinqoba Beat It! HIV/AIDS Archive required the project to come up with numerous innovative ways of making this historically significant footage readily available. One such innovative way of presenting the content to researchers was through the development of an HIV/AIDS Timeline. The Timeline is a resource in itself because it documents the response to the epidemic from government, the international community, civil society, health professionals and individuals since 1983. It also serves to place the Archive's footage in the specific socio-political context in which it was filmed and indicates which events in the epidemic's history in South Africa and internationally CMT has covered.

"ARCHIVE A VALUEABLE RESOURCE"

UCT Libraries has joined forces with the Community Media Trust (CMT) to house the archives of video tapes and transcripts documenting the history of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The archive, touted to be the first of its kind in the Southern Africa Development Community states, contains policy, stories, and people's personal testimonies on AIDS during its manifestation. Jack Lewis, CMT director, said the resource would become increasingly valuable as society moves away from "the heat of the epidemic". "By 2030, people caught in the heat of the epidemic (in the 1990s and 2000s) will have died, and this information will then be (even more) useful to students, researchers and academics," he explained.

On 25 March, the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding, allowing UCT to house the archives as part of the institution's broader commitment to developing archival resources on HIV/AIDS. Most of the footage was shot during the production of Siyayinqoba Beat It!, a television show for people living with HIV/AIDS, their support networks, and health workers. The value of the archive has been recognised by UNAIDS, who provided the funds for CMT to establish an online database. Three hundred hours of footage were created in 2008, and the project is set to continue for four years.