This study which formed the basis of this treatise was conducted during February 1999 by the researcher. The aim of the study was to examine narrative as communication in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Namibia. Particular reference was made to Emma’s Story, a 25-minute documentary produced by On Land Productions in 1997 on the life of a young woman, Emma Tuahepa Kamapoha, who was the first Namibian to publicly announce that she was HIV-positive.

Using an ethnographic research methodology within a cultural studies framework, the researcher used six focus groups and in-depth interviews to study the perceptions of Namibian youth on Emma’s Story and other socio-cultural myths which influence the perceptions of young Namibians on HIV/AIDS. Interviews were also conducted with representatives of organisations and individuals who were involved in the production of Emma’s Story. The study further made a semiotical analysis of Emma’s Story to determine how the producer ‘constructed’ this text to mean or to speak the same language as the audience so as to encourage symmetrical decoding by the audience.

Interpreting the results of this study within the framework of Stuart Hall’s (1980) encoding and decoding model and his later theories on representation and signifying practices (1996), the researcher concluded that on average all focus groups had a negotiated reading of Emma’s Story. Although focus groups understood the message of the text as encoded by the producer and even identified themselves with Emma, they had issues in the text which they interpreted in an aberrant manner. A good example will be Emma’s love relationship with Kaaronda which the majority of participants argued was morally incorrect. It was clear from the group discussions that participants generally understood the language of the text both in terms of the conceptual map and the signs and codes used in the text and they partially felt ‘interpellated’ by discourses in the text; but they argued that some specific issues needed to be changed so as to make the text an effective public awareness tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Namibia.

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