DEPUTY President Jacob Zuma in a televised appeal Friday urged South Africans to increase their commitment to fighting the AIDS pandemic, which he said had reached critical proportions. Some 3,6 million South Africans — one in every 11 — carry the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome virus, according to a study by the country’s Medical Research Council published in July. A lack of openness about the disease had held the country back, Zuma said. “Yet our attempts at openness, at fighting discrimination against those infected, and in recognising basic human rights, have sometimes gone horribly wrong. We cannot allow this to happen,” Zuma told the nation. The deputy president’s appeal comes a year after his predecessor President Thabo Mbeki launched a national “Partnership Against AIDS” campaign involving the government and private sector.
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