Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - September 3, 2006
Moipone Malefane

Letters written by the department's Director-General, Thami Mseleku, also order all provincial senior Health officials not to speak to the media about "the Aids issue" or comment on a proposed visit by Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy on Aids.

Mseleku claims in the letter that such a visit has been organised by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the Democratic Alliance.

The highly respected Lewis criticised Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the government at the 16th International Aids Conference in Toronto last month over the slow rollout of antiretroviral drugs and her promotion of nutritional foods such as beetroot, lemon and garlic as alternative Aids treatments.

Lewis had been invited by the TAC to visit South Africa to observe what it describes as the "delays, obstructions and confusing messages" on the prevention and treatment of Aids.

But TAC chairman Zackie Achmat told the Sunday Times that Lewis had turned down the invitation, claiming that the minister had banned him from visiting the country. Last year, Lewis told newspapers that he was banned from South Africa because of his critical views about the country's Aids policy.

In letters sent to provinces this week, Mseleku rails against Lewis and tells his provincial lieutenants that Tshabalala-Msimang had turned down an SABC request for a television debate with Lewis.

Mseleku describes Lewis's remarks at the Toronto Aids conference as "particularly scathing and derogatory about the South African government".

"You are thus requested not to give any interview to any media related to the Aids issue or the Lewis visit," writes Mseleku.

"Our view is that if Dr Lewis genuinely wants to know anything about the South African Aids programme, he should come to the department or see the minister instead of publicly rubbishing the programme first, to the extent of calling for a revolt against government, and then only wanting a debate afterwards," he writes.

Tshabalala-Msimang's spokesman, Sibani Mngadi, confirmed that Mseleku had written the letters sent to every provincial Health department, but denied that the minister had banned Lewis from visiting the country.

Mngadi said Mseleku wrote the letters after the department was informed that Lewis was coming to the country to join the TAC's "civil disobedience campaign".

"He wrote to all provinces saying they should distance themselves from any disobedient action by Lewis. We did not know what they were planning to do," he said.

According to Achmat, Lewis informed the TAC that he was not allowed to visit South Africa unless he apologised to the minister and President Thabo Mbeki.

"It is sad that the minister, instead of allowing open discussion, is censoring the UN envoy on Aids," Achmat said.

But Mngadi said the department had had no communication with Lewis's office since the Toronto conference.

DA spokesman on Health Gareth Morgan said his party knew nothing about any visit by Lewis.

At the conference in Toronto, Lewis said South Africa was the only country in Africa whose government was still "obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment".

He lambasted South Africa's Aids policies as "wrong, immoral [and] indefensible", saying they were "theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state".

South Africa came under the spotlight in Toronto with its exhibition stall, which was dominated by woven baskets of plump lemons, wilted beetroot, African potatoes and clumps of garlic.

Tshabalala-Msimang advocates the diet to fight HIV, an approach that Aids activists claims deludes HIV-infected poor people into believing there is a quick, cheap fix for the disease.

South Africa has an estimated 5.5 million people infected with Aids, the highest number in the world after India. The UN's Aids agency estimates that nearly 19% of South Africans aged 15 to 49 are living with the disease.

After the conference, Aids activists called for Tshabalala-Msimang to resign, saying that she was an obstacle to rolling out antiretroviral drugs for HIV/Aids patients.

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