Johannesburg | Tuesday
South Africa’s ruling party Monday said its position on Aids was correct, after its top leadership, including President Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela met over reported tensions on the issue.
African National Congress (ANC) representative Smuts Ngonyama said the meeting agreed that the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant women at test sites on a trial basis should continue.
“The meeting agreed the position taken by government and the ANC to pilot anti-retrovirals is correct,” Ngonyama said, despite a call for more urgent action by former president Mandela over the weekend.
South Africa has one of the highest Aids infection rates in the world, with an estimated one in nine people, or 4,7-million people, are HIV positive.
National government policy is to provide the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine at two test sites per province, to allow it to monitor side effects and build the capacity to supply nevirapine effectively.
But Mandela made his strongest statement yet on government’s Aids policy, urging it in a Sunday paper to tackle a “war” which was to be fought at once.
“This is a war. We must not continue to be debating, to be arguing, when people are dying,” he said, disclosing that his relations with ruling party were strained over the government’s refusal rapidly to make anti-retroviral drugs available to all pregnant women.
“I do know what appeared in the paper, but if you read it, there is nothing really in terms of government and the ANC’s policy that’s different,” said Ngonyama.
He put the purported rift between Mandela and the government down to a “communications gap”.
“On this issue (Aids), the meeting reached a common understanding and reaffirmed the correctness of the positions taken by both the ANC and the government,” Ngonyama said.
“The meeting identified a weakness with regards to communication on the Aids issue by all relevant structures,” he said. – AFP