The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has shrugged off combative remarks by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, saying the process it is engaged in with the government to change the national strategic plan on Aids will go ahead anyway.
”The process is going to go ahead in spite of her,” TAC national manager Rukia Cornelius told the South African Press Association on Saturday.
She was reacting to pronouncements by Tshabalala-Msimang — who is currently recuperating at home after being hospitalised for a lung infection — published on the ANC Today website on Friday.
Among other things, the minister said her illness and absence had been ”portrayed as an opportunity to turn others into champions of a campaign to rid our government of the so-called ‘HIV and Aids denial at the highest level”’.
Tshabalala-Msimang also criticised ”those who continue to falsely accuse some of us in government of being HIV and Aids denialists”.
Cornelius said if the health minister was trying to get a rise out of the TAC, this was not going to happen.
”If she’s looking for a fight, she’s not going to get it from us.”
The TAC was not particularly worried by Tshabalala-Msimang’s words because it was in a process of engagement with government and the health department, and a review of the South African National Aids Council (Sanac) was under way.
”Things are going to change whether the minister of health likes it or not.”
She praised Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge for ”taking a lot more leadership” on the Aids pandemic.
Tshabalala-Msimang’s return to office after her illness was not going to jeopardise the process.
”It goes way beyond the minister of health,” she said.
Cornelius confirmed the TAC was still calling for Tshabalala-Msimang to be fired.
In September this year, President Thabo Mbeki effectively sidelined the controversial Tshabalala-Msimang — infamous
internationally for promoting the use of African potatoes, garlic, lemon and beetroot as an Aids treatment — by handing the management of government’s Aids policy to Mlambo-Ngcuka.
The deputy president heads the Inter-Ministerial Committee on HIV and Aids, and Sanac.
In recent weeks, both Mlambo-Ngcuka and Madlala-Routledge have been meeting NGOs and civil society organisations in a bid to improve the government’s fraught relationship with this sector, which many have blamed on Tshabalala-Msimang’s leadership. — Sapa