Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Monday September 18, 2000
Mike Cohen, Associated Press Writer
President Thabo Mbeki, who has drawn fire for courting views of fringe AIDS theorists, has stated that the spread of AIDS can also be linked to poverty, malnutrition and tuberculosis - views that defy mainstream scientific opinion.
About 4.2 million South Africans, or 10 percent of the population, are HIV positive.
"There are other things we must be looking into in order to have a comprehensive response," Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said during a news conference after attending parliamentary briefings.
Tshabalala-Msimang would not say whether she believed there was a causal relationship between HIV and AIDS, and when asked whether people not infected with HIV could die of AIDS, the minister replied, irately: "I don't know."
Tshabalala-Msimang's fuddled perspective on the disease may stem from Mbeki's comments. Other members of Mbeki's Cabinet have been equally obtuse about the subject.
"My views on whether HIV causes AIDS are irrelevant," Kader Asmal, the education minister, said last week when asked how sex educators planned to address the issue.
Health workers say there is no clear indication of whether the government's approach has exacerbated the spread of the virus, but complain government statements are confusing.
"You want to have a campaign where people are clear and when mixed messages are sent out and people are confused, that makes the task more difficult," said Rob Eiger, director of the Society for Family Health.
Tshabalala-Msimang said the government had always encouraged condom usage - for a variety of reasons, including stopping the spread of HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
"We are encouraged by the increasing demand for condoms - 200 million condoms were purchased and distributed last year by the public health system," she said.
Essop Pahad, a Cabinet minister in Mbeki's office who is responsible for government communications, last week denied that the government's AIDS prevention campaign had been a public relations disaster, but conceded more needed to be done.
Last week, the government's HIV/AIDS stance drew fire from a traditional close ally - the 1.8 million-strong Congress of South African Trade Unions or COSATU.
"For COSATU, the link between HIV and AIDS is irrefutable and any other approach is unscientific and unfortunately likely to confuse people," the labor federation's president Willie Madisha told delegates attending a conference near Johannesburg.
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