Bay Area Reporter - October 12, 2000
S. Predrag

President Mbeki, who has been "flirting" with American and other dissident scientists for quite some time, recently accused the U.S., its Central Intelligence Agency, and multinational drug companies of conspiring to impose the view that HIV causes AIDS.

Addressing the African National Congress, South Africa's ruling party, its ministers, and members of Parliament, Mbeki said that his questioning the link between HIV and AIDS was harming the interests of multinational drug companies.

Mbeki also told the ANC caucus that South Africa was emerging as a leader among developing countries in its attempts to get a better deal in the world economy which was, as he put it, a threat to the U.S. and other major Western powers.

Mbeki, and his Minister of Health, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang, are isolating themselves even further from both the local and international community because of their repeated refusal to accept the majority view that HIV causes AIDS.

The dissident scientists claim that the real causes of a lack of resistance to AIDS are related to poverty, poor hygiene, under- development, and local diseases.

If one agrees that HIV causes AIDS, argues Mbeki, then it inevitably follows that it must be treated with drugs that are produced by Western drug companies. According to this logic, Mbeki concludes that American and other drug companies are forced to insist on the thesis that HIV causes AIDS in order to increase their profits.

Mbeki went even further by claiming that one unnamed Western drug company allegedly admitted to him in private that it has spent large sums of money trying - unsuccessfully - to make an anti-AIDS vaccine, but failed to isolate the HIV virus.

And here comes one of Mbeki's favorite conspiracy theories - he claims that the CIA was allegedly involved in covertly promoting the view that HIV causes AIDS.

According to the South African Mail and Guardian report, Mbeki said at a meeting held behind closed doors that criticism of his AIDS viewpoint was "a foretaste of foreign attempts to undermine his government." He added that a promotion of the idea that he was "deranged" was part of this campaign, particularly in the Western world.

The South African president also accused the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS lobby group, of being on the payroll of Western drug companies because it is insisting that the government in Pretoria should provide antiretroviral drugs to AIDS sufferers in South Africa.

However, TAC leader Zackie Achmat, who is said to be refusing antiretroviral drugs that could save his life until they are made available to all South Africans, challenged Mbeki "to provide any shred of evidence to back up his claims."

Achmat reminded Mbeki that, "It is written in our constitution [TAC bylaws] that we do not accept money from drug companies or from the government."

Although Mbeki has called on his ministers and other party caucus members to stand firmly behind him while he and his government fight off a "foreign conspiracy," interestingly enough, the participants of this meeting did not have a chance to debate the issues raised in the president's address.

Mbeki's government has decided to spend 2 million South African rands (more than $225,000 U.S.) to explain its AIDS policy, but his health minister, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang, was recently faced with widespread criticism after it was discovered that her ministry had distributed documents about yet another "conspiracy theory."

Her officials had, in fact, distributed copies of a chapter of William Cooper's book, Behold, a Pale Horse, which claims that the "Illuminati" - "a highly secretive international organization" - introduced AIDS to Africa in 1978 through the smallpox vaccine in an attempt to reduce the African population.

Meanwhile, South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, who retired from politics in June 1999 after choosing Mbeki as his successor, told local media that he subscribes to the "dominant opinion that prevails throughout the world" that HIV is the cause of AIDS. He added that he would only be persuaded otherwise if new scientific research showed "conclusively that that view is wrong."

Mandela advised Mbeki that, "I would like to be careful because for people in our position, when you take a stand, you might find that established principles are undermined, sometimes without scientific backing." It appears that Mbeki has not been overly influenced by local and international criticism in spite of the fact that 1,600 new HIV- positive cases are recorded daily in this African country.

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