Thabo Mbeki, former South African President, has again sparked another storm of controversy by addressing his “HIV denialism”, an issue that clouded his term in office and political legacy.
This is contained in the latest of a series of weekly newsletter released on Monday in Cape Town, aimed to set the record straight on his administration.
Mbeki claimed that he never mentioned that HIV did not cause AIDS.
He, however, said that the false accusation was made by people who benefited from trumpeting the slogan “HIV causes Aids”.
“What I said was that a virus cannot cause a syndrome,” he said.
Mbeki pointed out that AIDS is an acronym for “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, therefore AIDS is a syndrome.
He said it simply meant a collection of well-known diseases, with well-known causes, reports PANA.
“They are not, together, caused and cannot be caused by one virus.
Critics said Mbeki said in 2006 that HIV was the ninth leading cause of death in South Africa, while tuberculosis was at the top.
They quoted him as saying that “I am convinced that it would be perfectly understandable that the normal, thinking African would ask the questions.
“Why did it come about that so much noise was made internationally about the ninth leading cause of death in our country, with not even so much as a whimper about the first leading cause of death, tuberculosis,’’ he said.
They noted that when the first International Conference for People Living with HIV and AIDS was held in South Africa in 1995, Mbeki – who was Deputy President, then acknowledged the seriousness of the epidemic.
They said, however, after becoming President in 1999, his views changed dramatically and he began to endorse the views of a small minority of eminent scientists who claimed that AIDS was not caused by HIV.
Critics said further that in 2000, at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, Mbeki made a speech that attracted much criticism in that he avoided references to HIV and instead focused mainly on poverty as a powerful co-factor in AIDS diagnosis.
They said his administration was repeatedly accused of failing to respond adequately to the AIDS epidemic.
The New York Times in 2008 reported that due to Mbeki’s rejection of scientific consensus on AIDS and his embrace of AIDS denialism, an estimated 365,000 people had died in South Africa.
