Table 2.

Coding framework

Basic themes	Issues discussed in CCs	Organising themes	Global themes
Condom distribution	• Improving HIV services	(1) CCs allow community members to develop concrete action plans to cope with HIV	Community conversations (CCs) facilitate HIV competence
	• How best to care for PLWHA
Distributing food
	Strategies to reduce stigma		(Part I)
Keeping vegetable gardens
Home based care
Engaging with the Church
Participants felt motivated	• Participants want to play a role in the HIV response	(2) CCs provide community members with an opportunity to work with outside facilitators
	• Careful and respectful facilitation by outsiders
encouraged to action their plans
	• Facilitators enabled new ways of thinking
Valued by facilitators
Challenging damaging norms
Local strengths	• Recognition of the importance of a common purpose	(3) CCs allow community members to work towards a common goal
Local barriers to action
	• Importance of taboo subjects to be discussed and ways to collectively overcome stigma
Collective action for more openness
Recognition of lack of individual agency	• Need to act, develop solutions and translation information into action	(4) CCs can facilitate problem solving
Potential of the collective to turn information into action
Sharing of personal stories	• Recognition that HIV is not a family issue but a community responsibility	(5) CCs can overcome HIV-related silence and stigma
Recognising the scale of HIV
	• Improvements in HIV communication
Easier to talk about HIV
Good health because of ART	• ART has enabled local efforts to implement action plans	(6) Facilitators of HIV competence	Contextual factors influencing HIV competence
ART has meant HIV is no longer a death sentence
			(Part II)
Poverty	• Poverty, droughts and inflation made it sometimes difficult for community members to respond to HIV as they wanted.	(7) Barriers to HIV competence
Poor harvests
Risky behaviours	• Poverty and hunger fuelled risky sexual behaviour
	• Political situation meant some community members feared meeting in groups
Political upheaval