San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, July 16, 2001
Joel Pollak, Chronicle Foreign Service

When she discovers and eats one of the four illegally obtained luxury cars at each corner of the maze, her enemies turn a guilty blue and run away.

The star of the game, which is a knockoff of the original and produced by a student Web site, is real-life politician Patricia de Lille, a 50-year-old veteran anti-apartheid activist and member of Parliament from the leftist Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) party.

She has become the champion of the fight against corruption in government and is also South Africa's most outspoken politician on the issues of AIDS and poverty.

De Lille has developed the public image of a militant and is detested by many in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), led by President Thabo Mbeki.

But she is becoming one of the country's most popular figures.

"I don't deserve to be looked at as some icon," de Lille said in a recent interview. "I just do what I think any member of Parliament is supposed to be doing in the first place."

Her fight against corruption is symbolized by her allegations in late 1999 that ANC members had taken bribes from European companies during negotiations over an arms package valued at over billion.

De Lille's charges were initially ridiculed by ANC spokesmen, but they soon led to an investigation that captured headlines nationwide. Stories of other illicit payments and gifts to ANC members then began to surface.

The ANC has sought to block the probe into the arms spending, which was criticized in Western countries as wasteful and unnecessary, and has forced some of the lead investigators to quit. De Lille herself received anonymous death threats earlier this year but remains undeterred.

"This was not the first time I've had death threats in my career," she told the women's monthly Femina in April. "If I'm determined to do something, I will do it. I'm stubborn."

She is most passionate about the issue of HIV and AIDS -- and the government's stumbling response to the crisis. It is estimated that 1 in 8 South Africans is infected with HIV, and that South Africa has more infected people than any other country.

After Mbeki disputed the connection between HIV and AIDS, de Lille said: "He says poverty causes AIDS. I say AIDS causes poverty, because once a person is HIV-positive, if the person is the main source of income in a house, you find a whole family that will get poor.

"Poverty exacerbates HIV and AIDS-related illnesses, but it is definitely not the sole cause."

Not content with criticism alone, de Lille has campaigned for solutions to the crisis -- pushing for the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs.

"You ask any HIV-positive mother, 'Would you like to have an HIV-negative baby?' and the answer is always, 'Yes,' " she said. "The government needs to roll out mother-to-child transmission programs, especially now that the anti- retroviral drugs are being offered free of charge to them for that purpose."

In the past two weeks, de Lille brought the issue of poverty into the spotlight in characteristically controversial fashion. She and the PAC begun "selling" plots on vacant state-owned and private land in an area called Bredell to several hundred impoverished families.

The goal was to provide for the needs of destitute, landless people -- and to draw attention to the ANC's slow pace in addressing the country's unequal distribution of land. The government has built 1.1 million low-cost houses, providing more than 5 million people with shelter, water and sanitation. But 7. 5 million South Africans -- about 1 in 6 -- still lack proper housing.

The risky PAC gambit, with its echoes of the land seizures that have paralyzed Zimbabwe, South Africa's troubled northern neighbor, was squelched by the police under government orders late last week. But it moved the debate over land ownership and poverty to the front pages.

Some of de Lille's parliamentary colleagues are put off by her zealous, confrontational style of politics and her often-brash demeanor. But she has won the hearts of the people.

"I get files of letters of support on a daily basis from across the color line," said de Lille, who is of mixed-race descent (or "coloured," in South African terminology). "I don't care how they criticize me in Parliament, what's important to me is what the ordinary people out there think."

She is also flooded with complaints about public services and requests for assistance with everyday problems, most of which she sorts through personally.

"I don't have a full-time personal assistant, so I go and sit there in Parliament, and while they sit and talk all their nonsense, I do all my correspondence."

Last year, she visited Cape Town's Pollsmoor Prison to highlight the plight of juvenile prisoners who were being held with adult offenders in overcrowded conditions while awaiting trial. Her efforts resulted in a court decision that allowed many of the youths to be released.

De Lille's crusade for prisoners' rights is all the more remarkable for the fact that two youths brutally raped and murdered her sister, Laetitia, in 1997.

The PAC's virulently anti-white rhetoric during the struggle to end apartheid has not kept de Lille from making inroads among conservative middle- class and upper-class whites, although many admire her unflinching stance against corruption and her willingness to take on the government. They may not vote for her party, but they eagerly invite her to address Rotary Club meetings.

De Lille's broad appeal stands in contrast to the nation's sharply divided politics. South Africans are at odds over the transformation that the nation has undergone since the democratic elections of 1994.

One view is that the revolution has not gone far enough. Whites still control most of the country's economic resources and hold privileged positions in society.

The other view is that the revolution has gone too far, or rather that it has gone wrong. Not only white Afrikaners, but also Indians, people of mixed race and Zulus say they have been disenfranchised by the ANC government, which is dominated by members of the Xhosa ethnic group.

De Lille agrees with those who say that South Africa's transformation is incomplete. "The struggle," she said, "was about everybody having access to a decent life. And there are just too many people out there who still do not feel the benefits of this independence."

She argues that the ANC government has been a disappointment in many respects -- failing in its economic policies, ineffective in dealing with crime and tolerant of corruption within its own ranks:

"We come from a very corrupt system and a very corrupt philosophy of apartheid. But if you look at what's happening today in terms of corruption, it's not much better than in the past."

De Lille's political approach is fundamentally based on an unwillingness to compromise on the ideals that South Africa embraced when it rejected apartheid:

"When we wrote the final constitution (in 1996), we set very high standards for ourselves. What I am trying to do is to remind people and to be their conscience, to say: 'Listen, we've set these high standards for ourselves. We must live up to those standards.' "

010716
SC010704

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2001. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 2001. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .