Praise has been showered on South African Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) for the “strong, courageous leadership she has revealed in her recent interview” in the United Kingdom-based newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph.
The trade union federation — which is in alliance with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) — congratulated her for her stance in a statement issued on Tuesday by its spokesperson Patrick Craven.
Earlier on Tuesday, the deputy minister issued a statement saying that the newspaper’s journalist had wrongly reported that she had urged President Thabo Mbeki — long associated with being an Aids denialist — to take a public Aids test.
Significantly, Cosatu said it “also fully supports the deputy minister’s decision to take her family with her for an HIV test, and her call on President Thabo Mbeki to do the same. We urge all workers to follow her lead and get themselves tested.”
Craven said: “She has already played a crucial role in the struggle against HIV/Aids. She has helped to formulate the government’s five-year plan to triple the number of patients receiving life-saving antiretroviral [ARV] drugs and halve the rate of new infections.
“She has also been at the centre of forging a new national unity between the government and civil society in the battle against the killer pandemic.”
Craven noted that now the deputy minister had “bravely admitted that the government has been in ‘denial at the very highest level’ over Aids, which Cosatu has been arguing for many years”.
“Cosatu agrees with her on the merits of a nutritionally rich and balanced diet, but also her timely caution that she has not come across any scientific information that particular food items have a special role, and her insistence that traditional remedies cannot be a substitute for scientifically proven ARV treatment.”
Craven said the federation also agreed with her view that “it is tragic” that people were confused about treatment, and that it was irresponsible of leaders to say people had a choice between traditional healers and ARV treatment, “when this is not true”.
Cosatu said Madlala-Routledge’s views “are fully consistent” with the ANC conference resolution passed in Stellenbosch in December 2002, which committed the ANC “to strengthen and accelerate the implementation of the national Aids strategy, as amplified in the Cabinet statement of April 17 2002, and to be at the forefront of community mobilisation and leadership around HIV and Aids, especially around awareness, prevention, voluntary testing and counselling, treatment and care”.
This should include, said the resolution, “the use of antiretroviral drugs where appropriate”. — I-Net Bridge