Aids conference becomes Mbeki-bashing circus

By LYNNE ALTENROXEL

DURBAN - The South African government's worst fears have been realised: no sooner had the 13th International Aids Conference opened than it became a Thabo Mbeki bashing event.

Among the voice of dissent has been that of Edwin Cameron, a Constitutional Court acting judge, who used one of the first sessions, in which he delivered a memorial lecture to a hall packed with more than a thousand delegates, to slam the South African president and his government.

In a rousing speech that received a standing ovation, Judge Cameron accused the government of mismanaging the HIV epidemic "almost at every conceivable turn" and declared his disappointment at President Mbeki's opening night speech.

The speech, in which Mbeki insisted that his government was committed to the fight against HIV, did not do enough to counter government blunders, Cameron said.

He said that, to his "grief and consternation," Mbeki had made no announcement about providing pregnant women with the anti-Aids drug AZT.

Delegates expressed bitter disappointment with Mbeki's failure to come clean on his controversial HIV/Aids position.

While the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, defended Mbeki's interest in the revisionist theory that HIV does not cause Aids, Mbeki was criticised by a number of eminent delegates.

Tshabalala-Msimang said South Africa would not be dictated to by the world on how it should formulate its health policy. Mbeki, she said, was fully committed to fighting the HIV/Aids scourge holistically.

"The president of this country has never denied either the existence of Aids nor this causal connection between HIV and Aids," Tshabalala-Msimang said. "Why should he deny something he has not said?"

Conference chairperson Jerry Coovadia said there was an air of disappointment among thousands of conference delegates from across the globe that Mbeki did not reverse perceptions that he supported the dissident view that HIV was not the cause of Aids when he officially opened the conference on Sunday night.

Mbeki instead maintained his stance that poverty was the biggest "disease" causing death in Africa. Mbeki also questioned the effectiveness of the conference in dealing with the major issues surrounding Aids in Africa.

Coovadia said while he understood that Mbeki, as a president, could not simply backtrack on his position, "delegates expected him to make a major policy announcement to shift away from controversial issues."

This did not happen and disappointment was most acute in the address by Cameron.

Cameron has publicly aknowledged being gay and living with HIV for the past three years.

On Monday he said he was only still alive because he was able to "pay for life itself."

Cameron criticised Mbeki and his government for failing South Africans suffering from HIV/Aids. He also criticised the government's decision not to give the anti-retroviral drug AZT to HIV positive pregnant women dependent on the public health care system. He said because of this, about 5000 HIV-positive babies were born every month.

Cameron added that Mbeki's "intractably puzzling" statement and his flirtation with revisionists had shocked almost everyone involved in fighting the pandemic.

He said as a Constitutional Court judge, responsible for maintaining human rights in the country, he felt compelled to speak out about what was keeping him alive, while millions of South Africans were dying.

Coovadia agreed that the government had started its Aids awareness campaign far too late. He said Uganda, one of the only African countries where the HIV infection rate was dropping, started its campaign in 1990. South Africa's Aids campaign only kicked off in 1994, when the African National Congress took over from the apartheid government, which had spectacularly failed to address the disease.

- THE STAR (JOHANNESBURG)