Khomanani: critical discourse analysis of South Africa state-funded publications on HIV.
South Africa has been named as the country most strongly impacted by the HIV pandemic. At the end of 2007 an estimated 28.6 million people worldwide were living with HIV. In that year 2.7 million people became newly ill with HIV and an estimated 2 million people lost their lives to AIDS. Two thirds of people who are living with HIV and three quarters of people who die as a result of the illness are from the area of Sub-Saharan Africa (UNAIDS 2008). The South African government has responded to the high numbers of South African people who are becoming ill living with and dying as a result of HIV in various ways. One response is government-funded media campaigns that provide information on "prevention care treatment and support" with regard to HIV (Khomanani 2008m). Khomanani: Caring Together is a program of the South African Department of Health that creates publications on HIV. These publications are free widely distributed and governmentally promoted. The present study discursively analyses the complete collection of Khomanani booklets and leaflets. The analysis explores the underlying political message of the texts by looking at the power relations that are represented and assesses the ways in which the messages in the materials maintain as well as challenge existing power relations. Hegemonic biomedicine is the main discourse that emerged in the analysis. The discourses in the text reinforce dominant and oppressive power structures couched in the language of science and presented as powerfully authoritative. The conclusion is that the materials used for HIV education in South Africa must be critically reworked to address these complex and often hidden messages.