Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys has launched a biting attack on President Thabo Mbeki’s stand on Aids and nutrition.
”Most of the black people who have died of Aids in South Africa were too poor to even phone for help, let alone pizza delivery,” Uys said in a statement on Friday. ”Most of the white people who have died of Aids ate too well to bother with room service.”
He was responding to Mbeki’s statement to business leaders in Singapore this week that experts at a World Health Organisation conference agreed with him that nutrition is a very important aspect of fighting Aids.
Mbeki said it is ”not merely the availability of taking a pill and that is the end of the story”, but that effective Aids contravention requires a healthy body, an effective health-care system and efficient dispensing mechanisms.
”Quite why it became controversial I don’t know; to me, it was pretty simple,” Mbeki said.
Uys said sarcastically that Mbeki’s ”victory” is now internationally acclaimed.
”For he has won the debate in which he maintained healthy eating is a primary way of combating Aids.
”Actually, no one ever argued about that. The debate was about the issue: does HIV lead to Aids. That has still not been confronted in the front office of government, but let us not be churlish here.
”Something has been solved. The pope is dead, long live the pope — the dissident is gone, welcome the naked chef!”
Uys said one should pity Liberace, Rock Hudson, Brad Davis, Freddy Mercury and other superstars who died of Aids, because they clearly did not eat properly.
Many in the president’s own inner circle had also obviously been careless in their eating, and died of ”natural causes”.
”What does our president eat that keeps him so healthy and vigorous?” Uys asked.
”Let us give all the 30-million people in South Africa who need a good daily diet of more than the African potato, the food our president eats … And the food the minister of health eats, this medical guru whose buxom silhouette shows no shyness in the chewing department,” Uys said. — Sapa