OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Cape Town | Tuesday
THE African National Congress has accused the Democratic Alliance-led Western Cape government of using black Aids victims as guinea pigs by giving them “dangerous and toxic drugs” reminiscent of the biological warfare of the apartheid era.
Saying the ANC’s propaganda machine had “seriously lost the plot”, the alliance hit back by charging that the ANC was “sentencing thousands of babies and rape survivors to death”, and vowed to continue with the party’s campaign to make anti-retroviral Aids drugs affordable to all South Africans.
The ANC’s Smuts Ngonyama said in a statement his party had noted with “keen interest and serious concern” the recent attempts by the DA to use HIV/Aids as an electioneering tool.
“It is increasingly becoming evident that in this political ploy, there is total disregard for the well being and safety of our people who are being used as guinea pigs and conned into using dangerous and toxic drugs that are detrimental to their own health,” he said.
“Startling revelations” in a television documentary were “proof of the extent to which unscrupulous elements in our society can exploit the desperation of people living with HIV and Aids,” his statement said.
The DA’s spokesman Ryan Coetzee said the ANC was sentencing thousands of babies and innumerable rape survivors to death because of its stubborn refusal to provide legal anti-retrovirals to these women.
“The ANC does not seem to accept that HIV is rather more ‘detrimental to health’ than, for instance, a 28 day course of AZT.”
Alliance leader Tony Leon was meeting pharmaceutical companies in Europe this week to explore new ways of making anti-retroviral and other drugs available to South Africa at affordable prices, he added.
President Thabo Mbeki questions the link between HIV and Aids and declared recently that “a virus cannot cause a syndrome,” but the government’s Aids policy is nevertheless based on the premise that HIV does cause Aids, as all mainstream scientists agree. – AFP