Cape Town | Tuesday
THE African National Congress’s national working committee concluded its meeting in Johannesburg on Monday night without discussing the HIV/Aids issue, ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama said.
”It was an ordinary ANC meeting which we discussed (among others) the re-alignment of the structures of the party and preparations for the coming national executive committee meeting,” he said after the meeting.
”Madiba (Nelson Mandela) attended the meeting and nothing about Aids was discussed.”
Earlier on Monday, newspapers in the Independent group published an interview in which Mandela said the government had given the impression it did not care for the thousands of South Africans who were dying of Aids.
He said this was a matter of concern, and that antiretroviral drugs should be made available in public hospitals to all HIV-positive people who wanted them.
Asked if he thought he was making headway in the ANC with this proposal, he said he would campaign for it inside the organisation and had confidence that ”we will reach a settlement”.
He said in the interview that he would attend Monday’s national working committee meeting, and on March 15 a meeting of the ANC’s national executive.
”The matter maybe resolved even before I go to the national executive committee,” he said.
Monday’s meeting also followed reports of ongoing tensions between Mandela and his successor, President Thabo Mbeki, over Aids policy.
Indications were that Mandela would lobby for his position for antiretrovirals for not only pregnant women, but all people with HIV, but Ngonyama said the matter never arose.
Former US President Jimmy Carter, who is on an African tour, on Sunday criticised Mbeki for not leading the fight against Aids in South Africa, saying he had ”avoided this responsibility completely”.
On Monday morning the Aids lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign, won a Pretoria High Court ruling that the antiretroviral drug nevirapine be made available to all HIV-positive pregnant women, and not confined to 18 pilot sites.
The ruling was made pending a possible appeal by the government to the Constitutional Court.
TAC secretary Mark Heywood said it was now the duty of the government to supply nevirapine, and failure to do so was contempt of court. – Sapa