President Mbeki and Aids: A bizarre agenda

When history ultimately judges his presidency, Thabo Mbeki risks being examined not for his admirable efforts to kickstart an African renaissance, but for his bizarre agenda involving the Aids pandemic.

President Mbeki’s denial of a causal link between HIV and Aids–a position akin to a war general who denies that bullets kill people–cannot be regarded as an eccentricity.

While Africa is experiencing a pandemic comparable to the plagues of pestilence, Mr Mbeki seems to split hairs about what causes Aids, whether available Aids statistics are inflated, and whether potentially life-saving medications produce side effects. Incredibly, the president even seeks to implicate Aids activists in a racist conspiracy designed to undermine the good character of Africans.

All the while the Aids holocaust goes on.

The ministerial sycophants evidently do not have the mettle to contradict the president. If they did, they might point out that even IF the Aids death statistics released by the Medical Research Council are inflated (and the government makes a poor case in suggesting that they are), South Africa is nevertheless facing a social crisis of enormous proportions.

They might also tell Mr Mbeki that even if anti-retroviral drugs such as AZT produce noxious side effects, Aids-sufferers should be allowed a choice in this matter. At the same time the ministers might ask why the state took the pharmaceutical cartel to court over the pricing of anti-retroviral drugs– and won–only to then suppress access to these drugs.

They might also disabuse the president of his extravagant conspiracy theories by explaining that most Aids activists, many of them black, have little to gain by the racism he seems to attribute to them.

Finally, the boldest of cabinet ministers might point out that the government’s Aids policy has achieved nothing in slowing down the pandemic. Indeed, it might have exacerbated the spread of the disease.

Civil society has stepped in to restrict the consequences of the government’s handling of the Aids crisis. In this, the Catholic Church especially has been at the forefront.

South Africa cannot, however, depend on civil society alone.

President Mbeki must be made to hear the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “People whose lives could be extended by getting hold of the right drugs are dying, and discussing whether this or that is the cause [of Aids] is a luxury we cannot afford.”