A new breed of arts activism takes on AIDS.

• Author: Gorelick, Melissa

POTS AND PANS CLINK, a door creaks open and shut again, and in a nearby shack a child squeals. "I'll show you around my neighbourhood", says 19-year-old Thembi as she steps outside in South Africa's Khayelitsha township. "It is a bright, beautiful day. People are all out. They're starting to wash their laundries, putting them on the line. Music is coming from every house."

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With candid neighbourhood sounds, Thembi could be leading a visitor by the hand through details of her young life. But, in fact, she is thousands of miles away. As a broadcaster for the New York-based Radio Diaries, Thembi carries a microphone through her daily routine, recording a unique amalgam of youthful vibrancy and solemn silences. Her exuberance--a smile so wide you can almost hear it--shines through some of the most difficult situations imaginable. She is one of the staggering 29 per cent of Khayelitsha residents infected with AIDS. In addition, according to Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), the estimated 500,000 township residents also suffer from high unemployment and poor living conditions.

"There are a lot of us here who are sick", Thembi tells her audience. "But people don't disclose it because they are scared of discrimination. People talk, they point and whisper. Sometimes if they hear that someone has HIV, they burn the house down, so that you can't stay there anymore." Despite this oppressive stigma, Thembi's strength and determination to be heard prevail as she confronts her disease head-on. Her 22-minute broadcast takes listeners into her doctor's office and finds its way into her mother's house and into her private talks with her boyfriend, Melikhaya. "She has a kind of quiet poetry", says Radio Diaries producer Joe Richman, who stumbled across Thembi while working on another project in South Africa. "You lean in closer when she speaks. She draws you in."

Twenty-five years after the first AIDS diagnosis, activists face the challenge of reaching a public already saturated by the disease's grim statistics. But the epidemic, as Mr. Richman points out, has long remained a voiceless issue, especially in the developing world. For example, much of the sub-Saharan region, the epicentre of the AIDS virus, lacks the educational and communicative infrastructure needed to fight widespread infection and counteract the stigma. A new wave of narrative-style activism has begun to appear in some of the most impoverished, socially restrictive and remote communities.

Combining art and media activism, youth radio programmes and theatre are slowly taking a prominent role in the development programming of local non-governmental and major international organizations. AIDS activism reflects a progressive mix of creative...