Mail & Guardian readers can be excused for feeling a little puzzled by developments in the government’s HIV/Aids policy last week. “Thabo, Manto deepen Aids row”, M&G posters bellowed on Friday. “Government acts on Aids”, other media assured us a day later.
Both were on the mark. Prompted by mounting concern about the potential election fallout, and driven by enlightened ministers, there was a Cabinet U-turn on drug treatment for Aids sufferers. But as last week’s Aids conference highlighted, denialism persists. For this reason, it is essential to ensure that the proposed national treatment plan actually takes place and that, as far as possible, its implementation is removed from the suffocating hand of the denialists.
How does South Africa ensure that the heel-dragging that followed the April 17 2002 “about-turn” does not repeat itself?
The first requirement is “earnest money” — without an upfront government funding commitment, nothing will happen. By the end of September, the date by which the Ministry of Health must produce an operational plan, the government must have publicly earmarked a budget for at least a year of the national treatment programme. This must cover the cost of the national management framework and the programme implementation unit proposed in the Treasury-Health Department task team report. In the form of the R3-billion Aids contingency fund announced by Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel in this year’s Budget speech, the money is lying in government coffers, waiting to be used.
Though abused by denialists to stall and obstruct, cost concerns are legitimate. Drug prices have fallen significantly, but a national procurement team, including non-governmental interest groups, must be set up as quickly as possible to negotiate the lowest possible drug prices, irrespective of patent status.
A major difficulty confronting the plan is treatment education and counselling. Here again it is critical for the government to welcome and create space for the widest possible spectrum of knowledge and experience. The point is that Aids activists, and health workers and professionals of conventional views, should no longer be viewed as political mischief-makers out to undermine government — their cooperation will be pivotal to the success of the treatment plan.
Perhaps the most worrying feature of the task team’s report is its suggestion that nothing should happen for a six-month period while government gets its ducks in a row. As this deadline falls after next year’s election, the fear must be that the treatment plan will slip down the agenda. In any case, such a delay is simply unwarranted if sufficient political will exists.
By end-September, a range of public hospitals and clinics should have been identified where the treatment programme can kick off pretty much at once. These should include the numerous private facilities where anti-retrovirals are already being administered. These centres should be expanded, and the invaluable experience they have gleaned disseminated throughout the public health sector.
The government has taken an important step forward, and deserves praise for this. But as in every area, it is South Africans’ democratic responsibility to help the government to remain true to its word.
The good, they die young
We in this country are used to putting out young flames when they are at their brightest. Our graveyards, particularly the tombs of Anton Lembede, Steve Biko and the generation that perished in 1976, bear testimony to this. Hence, phrases such as “untimely death”, “had great potential” and “was the next best thing” make up so much of our national lexicon.
For once, in the cases of Orlando Pirates star Lesley Manyathela (22) and Smiso Nkwanyana (31), the South African Communist Party’s KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary, the old clichés held some truths. As with Manyathela, Nkwanyana died in a car crash.
Manyathela was not a hero only to those millions of rational and clear-minded South Africans who swear by the skull-and-crossbones. The cloud of gloom that engulfed South Africa this week showed that the entire nation saw in him someone who was set to help us restore our battered footballing pride.
By the same token, Nkwanyana’s intellectual prowess was of value way beyond the confines of the tripartite alliance.
Epitaph-writers and poets will not lack material to sing the praises of the two young South Africans. But for those who fought in the same trenches or played on the same fields as these gallant men, the greatest tribute they could pay would be to strive for the ideals the two espoused — excellence and commitment to their various causes.
We join the nation in the deep grief that envelops their families, friends, party and club.
Maybe Marvin Gaye, yet another of those who had no business dying when he did, had a point when he sang: “The good, they die young.”