Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - November 9, 2001
Jaspreet Kindra
"That is the message that is destroying human lives across this country, and for which President Mbeki is being daily judged at the bar of history," writes Bishop Peter Lee in a letter to the African National Congress's head of religious affairs, Cedric Mayson.
The letter is the latest in a series of acrimonious exchanges between church leaders and Mayson, who accused them of making "political" attacks on Mbeki over his Aids stance and described their criticism of him as "a disgusting ploy".
Lee, of the diocese of Christ the King, says his daughter chose to do her community service as a doctor in a rural KwaZulu-Natal hospital in 1998.
"In these three years in the front-line against Aids before her 27th birthday, she has had one constant experience," Lee writes. "When dealing in clinics with Zulu-speaking men who have sexually transmitted diseases, when she has sought to counsel them around issues of sexual behaviour, there has been one constant response: 'The big man says there is no connection between sex and Aids - so I will carry on as before.'"
He adds that his daughter spent a month on the anti-retroviral drug AZT after "collecting blood in the eye" during her work.
He tells Mayson: "Our concerns here are pastoral, and I take the strongest offence at anyone labelling them 'political attacks'. Our concern is for the people of the country."
In his response Mayson asks Lee whether he is wrongly promoting the notion that Mbeki denies a connection between sex and Aids, and is therefore responsible for destroying lives.
The bishop says that Mbeki's view "has been universally construed as fudging the causal link between sexual behaviour and the disease - from whatever motive". Linked to this was what the president had not done, in contrast with every other African leader: repeatedly and publicly declare "that personal behaviour change is the key to cracking the epidemic".
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