There is no alarm in South Africa about Aids, Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota said on Tuesday.
“All of this noise every day about HIV/Aids and so on, that suggest that this country is about to collapse as a result of HIV/Aids, is really unfounded,” he told senior foreign envoys in Pretoria.
“There is no alarm in this country.”
Lekota said programmes run by the government will enable it to contain the disease. The need to address the issue is taken very seriously, he added.
“This we are working very hard on, and we will reduce it.”
The minister said official estimates were that about 20% to 22% of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) members were infected with HIV — comparable to the rate in broader society.
The SANDF does not recruit people with what he termed “the condition”. Those who contract HIV later are deployed according to their abilities. Those who develop full-blown Aids will be looked after by their employer, Lekota added.
He said the defence force is not crippled by Aids, and blamed “disloyal” elements for “sneaking” out stories to this effect.
Some of these elements are members of the apartheid-era defence force who have not made peace with the transformation of the country, Lekota said.