AFP, Johannesburg | Wednesday
THE Anglican Church in South Africa has waded into a huge Aids controversy, saying history will rank the current lack of action by the government against the disease as a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid.
Cape Town archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the head of the church, issued a statement saying: “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.”
According to government figures, 4.2 million people – one-tenth of the population – were infected with HIV at the end of last year, but President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang claim – in opposition to most mainstream scientists – that poverty and other diseases, as well as HIV, cause Aids.
Ndungane called on all religious leaders to meet and develop a plan of action to fight the pandemic.
“We need an urgent strategic planning meeting of all interested parties so as to develop a plan of action and we need to move fast,” he said.
“We believe that history will measure this country’s slow response to the pandemic in human, not statistical terms, and that the inherent injustices will be judged as serious a crime against humanity as apartheid,” Ndungane said.
Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane, a member of the minority Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), also broke ranks with Mbeki, saying he believed that HIV and Aids were “inseparable.”
Correctional Service Minister Ben Skosana meanwhile announced that the number of prisoners with HIV or full-blown Aids had tripled in three years – from 1094 in July 1997 to 3209 in July this year.
Further opposition came from labour federation Cosatu, which has declared that the link between HIV and AIDS is “irrefutable” – a stand mirrored by the South African Communist Party, which forms the ruling alliance with the union federation and Mbeki’s African National Congress.
Tshabalala-Msimang said she still had no idea of the details of an offer by international pharmaceutical companies to bring down the price of Aids drugs.
She said the companies insisted they would engage not in dialogue or negotiation, but “talks about talks.”
In May, five of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies said they were ready to slash the prices of their HIV/Aids drugs for developing nations if the drugs could be safely and effectively administered and their distribution controlled.