Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
BBC News - November 6, 2007
Mark Gevisser says Mr Mbeki told him he regretted withdrawing from the debate, UK newspaper The Guardian reports.
He said that Mr Mbeki called him to specifically discuss Aids and sent a 100-page document explaining his views.
The president's spokesman refused to comment on the book's claims, but said the cabinet and Mr Mbeki were united.
"The most important issue is that the government has a comprehensive HIV/Aids programme - described by UNAids as one of the most comprehensive in the world - and it has the support of the entire cabinet and Mr Mbeki," presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga told BBC News.
Mbeki's message
The document, received in June, describes the science of Aids as being entrenched in racist beliefs about Africans.
"There is no question as to the message Thabo Mbeki was delivering to me along with this document: he was now, as he had been since 1999, an Aids dissident," Mr Gevisser writes in his forthcoming biography Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, which is launched in South Africa on Wednesday.
About 12% of South Africa's population is living with HIV.
According to The Guardian, in his book Mr Gevisser recounts how Mr Mbeki became sceptical about the link between HIV and Aids because of the way the debate was presented.
"You see, the presentation of the matter, which is actually quite wrong, is that the major killer disease on the African continent is HIV/Aids, this is really going to decimate the African population!" the president told Mr Gevisser.
"So your biggest threat is not unemployment or racism or globalisation, your biggest threat which will really destroy South Africa is this one!"
New policy
Mr Gevisser says Mr Mbeki was persuaded by colleagues to withdraw from the debate in 2002.
Two years later, ahead of elections, the government revised its HIV policy and began distributing anti-retroviral drugs.
"When I asked him in 2007 how he felt about having to withdraw from the Aids debate, he told me it was 'very unfortunate' that his initiative had been 'drowned'," the paper quotes Mr Gevisser as saying.
Some 380,000 patients are now on ARVs, although some 1.2 million are not receiving treatment.
South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang still comes in for criticism by Aids activists for sharing Mr Mbeki's views.
She has been nicknamed "Dr Beetroot" after recommending olive oil, lemon, beetroot and the African potato as elements of a healthy diet that could treat the symptoms associated with Aids.
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