The Siyayinqoba Beat It! Archive is the largest audio-visual archive on the history of HIV/AIDS and the struggle for health in South Africa. Over 1500 hours of material has been accumulated and is being transcribed, logged and made available on the web for researchers and historians.
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. CMT’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.