In South Africa, AIDS is a highly politicised issue, largely because President Thabo Mbeki is often criticised, not least by opposition politicians, for espousing the views of AIDS dissidents who question the HIV-AIDS link and who contend that the threat posed by the disease is grossly exaggerated.
The intensity of the debate means that NGOs seeking to help people infected with AIDS, or affected by it, have to be particularly careful not to become in embroiled in the controversy which recently saw the Medical Research Council targeted for criticism by Statistics South Africa, a government institution.
It is to the credit of Soul City, the South Africa NGO funded by the Irish Government, that it has raised AIDS awareness across the barriers of language, culture and race in South Africa without earning the enmity of either side in the debate.
The primary objective of Soul City is to help people cope with the menace in their midst through a series of simple messages on television, radio, in the newspapers and, of course, through booklets and pamphlets.
Though the intent is serious, the messages are informative without being didactic - Soul City uses the term "edutainment".
The most conspicuous and arguably the most successful of these edutainment programmes is the Soul City television series. It began in 1994 with Soul City Series 1 and is preparing to embark on Soul City Series 6 early next year.
The programmes deal with HIV/AIDS holistically. It is not presented as an isolated problem but is located in the broader spectrum of health issues.
Thus, the series covers a range of inter-related themes, from the need for exercise and correct eating, through the problems of sexual harassment in the workplace, to the challenge of dealing with death through HIV/AIDS and, as a counterpoint, to living with AIDS.
There is a parallel series of radio programmes on similar issues. Radio is still the medium which reaches the largest audience in South Africa, particularly in the black community where many of the poorest people live in remote rural localities.
Research shows that Soul City's fourth series reached 16.2-million people, roughly 40 per cent of the total population, through television, radio and print. This constitutes 79 per cent of its targeted audience.
Soul City seeks, with a high degree of success, to come to terms with the cultural diversity of South Africa, a country which has 11 official languages, nine of them spoken by the indigenous black community. The television and radio series are beamed to the distant corners of the country in all the main languages, with English sub-titles.
Soul City is a fictionalised town centred around a clinic known as Masakane. This is a Zulu word which exhorts people to "build the nation" - it was used by the government to encourage people to fulfil their responsibilities as citizens of the inchoate post-apartheid nation.
The series has been extended to reach out to children. Known as Soul Buddyz, the child-orientated series seeks "to deal with issues that children are facing all the time". Each episode ends with the comments of real children commenting on the points and problems raises during the 30 minute telecast.
An impressive element in the Soul City series is its ability to transmit the message that HIV/AIDS is a threat to all South Africans and not simply the problem of the poorer and historically deprived black community.
There is demographic and racial representation in its characters.
The series used simple language, but it does so without patronising its audience. It is frank on sensitive issues, including the imperative need for greater condom use.