The decision to collaborate with Uganda in the fight against Aids is one of the most significant steps our government has taken to address what is unquestionably the most important economic and health issue facing this country in the next millennium.
South Africa lags far behind Uganda where dealing with this modern plague is concerned: Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has personally spearheaded an ambitious countrywide initiative to spread the word about HIV. Shortly after coming to power in 1986 after Uganda’s brutal civil war, Museveni swung into action over the Aids epidemic engulfing his country. His government rapidly masterminded a multi- pronged strategy to combat the disease – intensive education campaigns, condom distribution, voluntary HIV testing, pop songs, billboards, drama groups, counselling and support services.
South Africa’s new Minister of Health Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will therefore have much to learn this week during a tour of Uganda to study that country’s Aids control programme.
At an Aids seminar in Kampala, Tshabalala- Msimang reportedly blamed South Africa’s tardiness in dealing with the disease on the apartheid government, which she said had ignored Aids because it was a “black disease”. While there is some truth in this view, some among her Ugandan audience will have been presumably puzzled to hear a regime that has been in place for five years blaming a retarded Aids programme on its predecessor.
The most significant part of Tshabalala- Msimang’s Ugandan foray will be capitalising on the decision by South Africa and Uganda to jointly lobby major pharmaceutical companies for price cuts in a new anti-retroviral drug – a drug that is being hailed as the first effective means of preventing the transmission of the virus from mother to child.
According to test results in Uganda, this drug, Nevirapine, could stop the spread of Aids in up to 400 000 newborn babies in developing countries a year. Before the introduction of Nevirapine, the only way to stop the disease spreading from pregnant mothers to their infants was with very costly AZT-based drugs – a treatment which the South African government currently deems too expensive. The new drug is about 200 times cheaper for long-term users and 70% cheaper than previous drugs for a short course.
By all accounts, the tie-up between the two countries is a concrete alliance with real goals – not a nebulous treaty between politicians. It will also, hopefully, provide our government easy access to a role model on how to fight Aids in Africa.
Sporting malaise
After the highs of the past two years, culminating in the record-equalling 17 consecutive Test wins, it’s almost inconceivable that South African rugby has fallen so low, so quickly.
Unsurprisingly, there have been public calls for the coach’s head. But firing Nick Mallett, who is still clearly the man for the job despite the malaise rugby is in, is not the answer. But when his public statements and his changes in the Springbok line-up, forced by a cruel run of injuries, vary so widely, it is hard to feel sympathetic.
How come, for instance, he picks two players he has previously dropped for their inability to tackle in the vital, defensive channels of flyhalf and inside centre?
“Gaffie du Toit,” says Mallett “can tackle – he’d just never been taught who to tackle before reaching the national level.” Alternatively, Franco Smith, summarily axed after the narrow win over Wales last year, “was not properly prepared in the defensive patterns by the management”.
Which all begs the question: so why weren’t they re-educated then rather than in the few days after Henry Honiball and Brendan Venter were suddenly indisposed?
Mallett’s resilience to suggestions about key players is no longer justifiable given the under-performance of the incumbents. Percy Montgomery is a case in point. Andr Joubert has gone from strength to strength, while Montgomery is a shadow of his 1997 self.
The victory of the “Baby Boks” over arch- rivals New Zealand at the Sanzar under-21 competition in Buenos Aires last week is perhaps a perfect model for Mallett. With six players of colour, they are playing the brand of expansive rugby the national team only aspires to at the moment, notwithstanding Mallett’s comments that skills below national level are effectively sub-standard. Notable in the Baby Boks’s win was the assistance of axed technical adviser Jack White and the fact that their coach is black. Mallett’s siding with his own assistant coach, Alan Solomons, in the spat that saw White dropped, has deprived the Springboks of a keen analytical mind that they seem unable to win without.
Given that the World Cup is little more than two months away and the Tri-Nations offers only two more Tests for the Boks to play, Mallett has little time to settle into a winning formula.
On another sporting front, South Africans as concerned by the poor showing recently of the national soccer team are turning on Trott Moloto. The Bafana Bafana mentor’s position is a whole lot more difficult. With most of his top players based overseas and flying in for only a week’s preparation before any match, it’s unlikely they can perform at their best.