JOHANNESBURG, Aug 27, 2006 (AFP) - South Africa's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, dubbed "Dr Beetroot" for her championing of vegetables in the fight against AIDS, is facing growing calls to quit, both at home and abroad.
International frustration at the government's policies in a country where 5.5 million are infected with HIV, boiled over spectacularly earlier this month when the UN's top envoy for AIDS in Africa denounced what he called "theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state".
Stephen Lewis's criticism at an international AIDS conference in Canada, where he accused the government of being "obtuse, dilatory and negligent" in its distribution of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), is echoed both by AIDS campaigners and the opposition in Pretoria.
Tshabalala-Msimang however appears determined to weather the firestorm and there is little to suggest that she is going to be cut loose by President Thabo Mbeki, who has himself in the past questioned whether AIDS is caused by HIV.
The minister has been a long-time exponent of a diet of beetroot, garlic and lemons to fight HIV, an approach scientists say is worthless and campaigners say can delude poor people into believing there is a quick, cheap fix.
"The minister has continuously shown that she does not have any confidence in ARVs as a method of treatment for HIV-positive people," said Patricia de Lille, leader of the opposition Independent Democrats, who called for Tshabalala-Msimang's resignation this week.
"She continuously wants to pretend as if her method -- which is garlic and lemon and beetroot -- is a replacement for ARVs, while there is no scientific evidence that that is the case," de Lille told AFP.
"If you look at the opinion of the world experts and the public, there is general consensus that the time has come for Mbeki now to intervene and replace her."
As the main AIDS lobby, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) began a programme of civil disobedience on Thursday.
Six opposition parties signed a petition to demand Tshabalala-Msimang's dismissal, saying her "bizarre ideas" had undermined the fight against AIDS and caused "unnecessary loss of life."
The health minister rejected the criticism aimed at her by Lewis "with contempt" and denounced de Lille for her "ignorance".
"My resignation? I haven't thought of it and I am not just about to think of it," she said in a defiant press conference on Friday night.
"I'll tell you why: because I don't appoint myself, I get appointed by the president," secure in the knowledge that she retains her mentor's confidence.
The government says that 175,000 people are benefiting from the free distribution of ARVs, a programme launched in 2004 after long years of delays.
But according to the TAC, more than 700,000 people are in need of ARVs in a country where 800 people die every day as a result of AIDS.
Apart from the domestic critics, a number of non-governmental international organisations are voicing their exasperation at the approach of Africa's economic powerhouse towards the funding of drugs.
"This programme of ARV distribution is being conducted in a half-hearted manner," bemoaned Eric Goemaere, a South Africa-based official with Medecins Sans Frontieres, who launched a pilot scheme for distributing ARVs in the massive township of Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, in 1999.
"The health sector is trying to do its best in a surreal situation where you have the political class paying deference to a surreal minister," he told AFP, arguing that Tshabalala-Msimang had done "major damage."
"I would like to see her go but I don't think that Mbeki is going to drop her now," he added.
Mbeki himself has so far remained tightlipped, reacting neither to Lewis's outburst nor to the calls for Tshabalala-Msimang's scalp.
After a cabinet meeting on Thursday, a government spokesman said that Tshabalala-Msimang's position had not come under discussion and insisted there would be no change in policy, although it would seek "a better way of communicating the strategy."
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