Finance Minister Trevor Manuel on Wednesday angrily denied he had referred to Aids drugs as a ”lot of voodoo”. He was forced to defend himself in the National Assembly after two opposition MPs criticised him for his reported comments.
Manuel said he had been misquoted in Wednesday’s Business Day newspaper about what he had said in reply to the Budget debate, in which IFP MP Peter Smith had criticised the government’s Aids policy.
”What I said is contained in Hansard (Parliament’s official record of debates)… and because it’s in the Hansard, I think that both of those questions (from MPs) are in utmost bad faith,” the minister said.
Waving a copy of the unrevised version of the Hansard, he said: ”(I said) ‘I think there is a lot of voodoo being spoken by the likes of Smith’. (That) is not the same as being quoted in the Business Day,” Manuel protested.
”So, why do they get it so wrong?”
He was referring to the newspaper headline which read: ”Manuel says Aids drugs are ‘a lot of voodoo’.”
Manuel told MPs on Wednesday that South Africa required a comprehensive approach to fight HIV and Aids, and not the provision of antiretrovirals to the exclusion of everything else, including prevention.
He repeated that Aids drugs could not cure the disease and said the bulk of investment should remain on prevention strategies.
The newspaper report, which also quoted Manuel as describing antiretrovirals as a waste of valuable resources, led to sharp criticism from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Aids lobby groups and opposition political parties.
Cosatu said it was ”shocked and horrified”. The comments flew in the face of the world health profession, the experience of people living with HIV, and the Cabinet’s position on antiretroviral treatment, it said.
In a statement released after its fortnightly meeting on Wednesday, Cabinet called on all South Africans to join government’s campaign against the disease.
”Our energies should be spent fighting Aids, not one another. There is a plan; and let us strengthen the people’s contract to implement it,” it said.
Government representative Joel Netshitenzhe said Cabinet had reviewed the implementation of its strategic plan to fight HIV/Aids, based on the premise that HIV caused Aids.
He was speaking on the eve of the start of a civil disobedience campaign by the Treatment Action Campaign to demand a national treatment plan for HIV and Aids.
Netshitenzhe said that based on the positive impact of government’s prevention strategy, the increase in allocation of resources, progress achieved in preventing mother-to-child transmission and the expansion of home-based care, Cabinet was convinced it was ”conveying a message of hope”.
The battle against the disease could not be narrowed down to one specific intervention, he said.
The government had a comprehensive five-year HIV, Aids and sexually transmitted disease strategy that addressed prevention, research, treatment and care.
Prevention was critical, as there was still no known cure, Netshitenzhe said.
Government plans to publish newspaper advertisements to help put its message across.
Netshitenzhe said there was no need for the TAC to launch its civil disobedience campaign. – Sapa