AIDS crisis looms over ANC ahead of leadership vote

JOHANNESBURG - AIDS has driven a wedge between the leadership and rank-and-file of the ruling African National Congress, with top officials accused of ignorance and activists aghast at the government's handling of the pandemic.

South African President Thabo Mbeki and his former deputy, Jacob Zuma, who will battle each other for the presidency of the ANC at a leadership conference later this month, have both been burned politically by the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Mbeki drew sharp criticism shortly after coming to power in 1999 when he questioned accepted AIDS science and failed to make life-saving anti-retroviral drugs widely available in a nation where some 365,000 people die annually from the disease.

Zuma, who once led South Africa's national AIDS council, added to the party's grief when he testified in his 2006 rape trial that he had showered to protect himself from the disease after having sex with his HIV-positive female accuser.

The Zulu politician, who leads Mbeki in local branch nominations for the ANC presidency, was acquitted of rape but, like Mbeki, thrashed in the court of public opinion for poor judgement and a lack of awareness on AIDS.

"Mr. Zuma has a lot to prove to demonstrate that he is committed. In President Mbeki's case there is little he can do to resurrect the disaster he has created," said Nathan Geffen, a spokesman for the Treatment Action Campaign, a South African group campaigning for the rights of people with HIV/AIDS.



ZIG-ZAG APPROACH

There are fears South Africa, still viewed as a late and reluctant convert in the AIDS war, could continue on a zig-zag track with either Mbeki, who is vying for a third term as ANC leader, or Zuma at the helm.

The best hope for a radical break with the past could come in the form of a compromise candidate, such as ANC activist-turned-tycoon Tokyo Sexwale, who is board chairman of LoveLife, a national HIV prevention programme for youth.

"When there is a fire, you put it out. You don't argue about what causes the fire, you don't first discuss the theory of combustion," Sexwale told the Cape Town Press Club in an Oct. 25 speech that was widely seen as an attack on Mbeki's AIDS policy.

Neither Sexwale nor former union chief Cyril Ramaphosa, also seen as an alternative to Mbeki and Zuma, have been nominated for the ANC presidency. They could, however, still end up on the ballot through a floor nomination at the Dec. 16-20 congress.

Mbeki, for his part, has never recanted his unorthodox AIDS views and continues to exercise sway over the direction of the government's AIDS policy, largely through his unwavering support for controversial Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Dubbed Dr. Beetroot for her promotion of beetroot, garlic and other foods as frontline treatments for HIV/AIDS, Tshabalala-Msimang has been branded an AIDS denialist by angry scientists and grassroots activists.



LEADERSHIP VACUUM?

Hopes of a shift in the government's attitude to a disease affecting nearly 12 percent of its 47 million people were stoked earlier this year when Tshabalala-Msimang withdrew from public life after a liver transplant.

A revamped AIDS strategy, including an expanded rollout of ARVs, was unveiled at about the same time, with Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and former Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge spearheading a more orthodox approach.

Activists in the ANC and its leftist coalition partners, who had for years been calling for such a U-turn, were delighted.

But Mbeki muddied the waters again when he fired Madlala-Routledge, ostensibly for failing to seek permission for a foreign trip but widely seen as punishment for stealing the limelight from the ailing health minister, an Mbeki ally.

Tshabalala-Msimang has returned to her post.

The AIDS debate is unlikely to be the make-or-break issue when the more than 4,000 ANC delegates cast ballots in Polokwane this month despite a widespread recognition that it is one of South Africa's biggest problems and one of the ANC's biggest failures.

"We were fiddling whilst our Rome was burning," Archbishop Desmond Tutu said last week in a speech on the eve of World AIDS Day. "People who would have been alive today died needlessly," the Nobel laureate said.