Southern Africa, and South Africa in particular, has entered the spotlight in terms of the global AIDS epidemic. According to statistics released by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 22.5 million adults and children were living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 1998, roughly two-thirds of the global total of 33.4 million. The number of new cases in this region in 1998 was estimated to be 4.0 million (UNAIDS 1999). Since the installation of a democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has also seen a substantial increase in the trafficking and use of harder drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin. In this country, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS have largely been handled independently vis-à-vis research and policy. The most likely reason for this situation is that the link between substance abuse and HIV infection is seen as less direct than it is in many other parts of the world.