Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - April 7, 2006

While careful never to come out openly against Mbeki, Zuma did not buy into the denialism of the late Nineties and pushed the ABC: to abstain, be faithful and condomise.

Now look.

His evidence in court, where he is facing rape charges, suggests that his many speeches and his leadership of the South African National Aids Council were all shallow rhetoric. He did not abstain, he is not faithful and he did not condomise. Both Mbeki and Zuma have taken the battle against HIV and Aids back by 10 years.

Global research shows that civil society activists can shout till they are blue in the face, but the best remedy to counter the various threats of the disease is leadership.

Mbeki wears a red Aids ribbon, but he does not mention HIV or Aids in any of his regular enunciations on the risks facing the continent. And he has not driven the effective implementation of the anti-retroviral drug treatment programme, which the state still insists on calling "the largest in Africa".

It may be so on paper, but it is a trickle-out, not a roll-out.

Now Zuma. He had unprotected sex with a woman who is HIV-positive and did not know he could re-infect her. He thought that taking a shower would reduce his own chances of infection. A cold shower cures other pressures.

He did not think about his wives and other sexual partners; he thought only of himself. And he did not think about the legion of young men and women for whom he is (still) a national hero and a mentor. What possible message can these young people take from the evidence presented at the trial?

That it is okay to sleep around and fine not to wear a condom when a shower will do the trick? That it is okay to disguise acute lapses of judgement under the paper-thin rhetoric of tradition and culture?

The trick to keeping the next generation of adult South Africans Aids-free lies with important work to ensure changes in behaviour that will prevent infection. It is not rocket science, but with role models like this, what chance is there?

The work of national campaigns like Khomanani, loveLife and Soul City have arguably been set back by five years in just five awful days in court. It is a travesty. Take the denialist years of Mbeki and that makes it a decade. Urgent leadership is needed or we will cry into our sleeves as we bury another generation.

Benchmarks

The Bench is a soap opera, or at least that is the way things look this week.

Cape Judge President John Hlophe is on long leave after revelations that he earned R10 000 a month as an "out of pocket expense" from Oasis asset management, an egregious oversight.

To add insult to injury, he then allowed Oasis to pursue a case against his colleague, Judge Siraj Desai, without declaring his conflict of interest.

It is not entirely unexpected from a man not known for possessing the erudite qualities his high office demands. Judge Hlophe, after all, called his legal colleagues "pieces of white shit" in an ugly imbroglio on the Cape Bench, one to which he has brought little leadership or change.

In another incident this week, two candidates appearing before the Judicial Service Commission, Mhloti Winston Msemeki and Letty Mpho Molopa, did not resign their positions as African National Congress members before making themselves available as candidates for the Bench. In fact, Msemeki was asked if he had joined the organisation to bone up his chances.

Both incidents suggest that incumbents and candidates do not appreciate the need for scrupulous independence on the Bench, a key measure of transformation. Too often, transformation is interpreted as a narrow racial imperative when, in fact, it requires diversity as well as the mindset shifts that will make the judiciary a force to be reckoned with as we build a constitutional democracy.

It is time for Chief Justice Pius Langa to show leadership.

He should now launch a rigorous and transparent investigation of the various problems of the Cape division.

More importantly, he needs to take on the fight to regain judicial space from executive encroachment - and to regain the initiative in defining a judicial transformation project that will draw strength from our constitutional values. A functioning legal order requires both independence and the highest ethical commitment from its judges. We deserve no less.

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