United Press international - October 24, 2000
Timothy Kalyegira

The new educational guidelines were carried in newspaper, radio and television advertisements, as part of the government's national health policy.

South Africa, despite its strong economy and advanced healthcare system, has one of the world's highest rates of AIDS infection. Official estimates say that more than four million South Africans -- about 10 percent of the population -- are infected with the HIV virus.

The new guidelines call for abstinence from sex, faithfulness among partners, as well as the use of condoms.

The South African government has been widely condemned over its ambivalence over the AIDS crisis in the country. On Sept. 20, the Anglican Church in South Africa said history would judge the government's intransigence over AIDS as a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid. The Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane issued a statement saying it was becoming increasingly clear that the South African Government was unwilling to come up with a solution to the Aids problem.

"What is becoming increasingly clear is the futility of looking to government for a solution. At the very least, we need to apply pressure on our political leaders to change this situation," the statement said.

It was only as recently as 1998 that the former president Nelson Mandela came out publicly to admit that his country was faced with its most serious public health crisis.

His successor president Thabo Mbeki earlier this year stirred international controversy when he expressed doubts over whether HIV was the sole cause of AIDS. The government declined to give anti-retroviral drugs to patients in hospital, arguing that they were too toxic and expensive to deal with the crisis. The ruling African National Congress party and government still holds to the view that the anti-retroviral drugs are dangerous, despite their use and acceptance elsewhere in the world. The government even refused to administer the drugs where they could have been used to prevent mother to child transmission in cases of unborn babies.

At the international AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa in June, researchers warned that AIDS could reduce the wealth of some African countries by as much as 20 percent, if it was not contained. The researchers said a vicious cycle in which HIV/AIDS drives many families into deepening poverty, and at the same time poverty speeds the spread of HIV.

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