A group of actors in conjunction with the AIDS organisation, Wola Nani, are volunteering their time to run workshops that use the Boal forum theatre technique to inform and equip people with HIVAIDS to understand their rights and to act upon them. By involving the audience in the play to the extent that they re-enact parts of the drama, participants are empowered to change the tone and content so that they are able to practise asserting their interests and concerns.

The AIDS organisation, Wola Nani has contracted a group of actors to run workshops to empower people with HIV in their daily relationships and interactions. However, this is not just another role play by actors in front of an audience. Using the Boal Forum Theatre technique, the actors encourage the audience to take part in the play and to change the way in which the drama is played out. The idea is to build people's confidence and to take charge of the situations in which they find themselves. Sue Valentine spent a day with the Cape Heart Theatre company.

Sadly, it would seem, that many healthworkers serving in clinics and hospitals around South Africa stigmatise and ridicule people with HIV/AIDS. When one woman in the Western Cape spoke out about it at a meeting recently, the room resounded with echoes of similar stories. Sue Valentine reports. [This feature was first broadast on "AM Live" on SAfm on Thursday March 1, 2001. Speaking on the programme immediately after this report was played, a spokesperson for G F Jooste Hospital denied that staff at his institution discriminated against people with HIV/AIDS. On the contrary, he said, his staff were trained to deal with patients sympathetically and with kindness.]

This week in our regular feature, spy-master novelist John le Carre shares his thoughts on the pharmaceutical industry and we meet a South African who's gained access to medication through volunteering for drug trials.

One of the world'€™s pharmarceutical giants, Pfizer, was a notable absentee among the litigants represented by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers'€™ Association when they took the South African government to court this week.