JOHANNESBURG, Aug 7 (AFP) - Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the veteran Zulu leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), on Saturday made an emotional appeal for South Africa to do more to halt the AIDS pandemic when he revealed his own daughter had died of the disease.
Buthelezi made the appeal at the funeral of 48-year-old princess Mandisi Sibukakonke, whose death on Thursday followed that of her 53-year-old brother, Nelisuzulu Benedict Buthelezi, also from AIDS, in late April. Sibukakonke leaves behind a eight-year-old son.
"We have done too little. How much more suffering and pain shall we bear before those who have the responsibility open their hearts?" Buthelezi, 75, was quoted by the South African SAPA agency as saying in his funeral address.
"The feeling of despair and hopelessness that her mother and I feel, has been experienced by countless anxious parents across the land," he added.
He said that the struggle against AIDS had now to be the main priority for South Africa and the continent as a whole.
Buthelezi's stance on AIDS makes him one of the few politicians in South Africa who have dared speak out over the terrifying impact of AIDS on a country where an estimated 5.3 million people, or one in nine, live with HIV or AIDS.
Along with the IFP leader, one of the few public figures to break the taboo has been former president Nelson Mandela, who revealed that a niece and two great-nephews had died of AIDS.
When Buthelezi revealed that his son had died of AIDS, a close aide said he had become "free for the first time in his life".
President Thabo Mbeki, whose government once labelled antiretroviral drugs as "toxic" and "dangerous", has in the past come under fire for failing to quickly deal with the pandemic and for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has also been criticised for advocating a quirky diet of beetroot, spinach, garlic and olive oil to combat the fatal syndrome.
The government has now bowed to international pressure and started the continent's biggest and most ambitious AIDS treatment programme but currently only a fraction of the country's more than five million sufferers are getting free drugs.
Already the cost to South Africa has been immense. According the International Labour Organisation (ILO), South Africa lost a staggering 72 billion dollars between 1992 and 2002 due to deaths, absenteeism and lower productivity related to the pandemic.
South Africa's influential Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said in July that efforts to fight AIDS were being stymied by the lack of political will and a shortfall of drugs
"Despite the best efforts of health workers, political prevarication and weak management continue to deny many people access to health services that would save their lives," it said.
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