TAC PRESS STATEMENT ON FORMER PRESIDENT MBEKI’S RECENT STATEMENTS
– Thabo Mbeki’s comments are an injury and insult to millions of people living with HIV
– Government and the ANC should condemn them.
27 September 2022, Johannesburg – The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) learnt with much distress that former President Thabo Mbeki once again peddled his dissident views on HIV at a speaking engagement he had at the University of South Africa (UNISA) last Wednesday, September 21st. The repetition of his scientifically erroneous views with such insensitive arrogance is an insult to the 8 million people living with HIV in South Africa and the families of 4 million South Africans who have died from HIV over the last three decades. “Every time Mbeki makes these statements it brings back the tremendous hurt I felt when my husband died from HIV in 2005. I believe that he would be alive today if the government had rolled out treatment earlier”, said Sibongile Tshabalala, the recently re-elected National Chairperson of TAC.
TAC would like to make the public aware that he is misleading them when he questions the cause of AIDS.
We also assure the public that all of the main tests for HIV including the rapid (screening and confirmatory) test, ELISA and PCR tests are highly accurate and that a positive test is sufficient for the majority of people testing positive to start treatment. This is established in both the WHO and South African treatment guidelines.
We call on Mr Mbeki to desist from misleading the public about the quality and accuracy of HIV testing available in South Africa.
Mr Mbeki stunned us again with his support for the views of the late former Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who was ridiculed for promoting garlic and beetroot as the essential ingredient to manage AIDS giving it a higher premium than antiretroviral treatment. Whilst there may be benefits in all healthy foods, the idea that these vegetables are what are most required in the management of AIDS has no basis in fact and are misleading to the public.
Tshabalala, who lives openly with HIV stated: “We don’t just have scientific evidence that HIV is causing many illnesses. We have people who are a living example, who have gone from being diagnosed with HIV and later developed AIDS. Some of us have gone through that. We survived because we were treated for opportunistic infections until we were initiated on ARVs. I was diagnosed in 2000 and had to deal with opportunistic infections in and out of hospital 3 or 4 times a year. I only started ARVs in 2006 and 16 years later I am living a normal life. I had two children while I was on ARVs and both of them are negative.”
We note that Mr Mbeki was silent when it comes to ARVs. We think this is an inability on his part to acknowledge that ARVs have been a life-saving intervention for millions of PLHIV and that history has proven him to be completely wrong in this regard. The more than 5 million people on treatment today in South Africa is testament that he was completely wrong about the affordability of providing treatment at prices that are affordable for the country. “If former President Mbeki had one grain of compassion, he would realize that he has belittled millions of South Africans with his denialist statements,” said Tshabalala. “We urge all South Africans on ARVs to continue with their treatment and not to become confused with statements such as those made by Mr Mbeki,” she said.
There is much ongoing stigma and denial when it comes to HIV and we call on Mr Mbeki to desist from statements about HIV that have no basis in fact. He is in danger of creating confusion that will hinder government and civil society efforts to further increase testing and treatment and reduce deaths due to HIV. This is a priority, especially after the set-backs caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The former President’s statements remind us that his unscientific views led to a delay in the rollout of the ARV programme during his Presidency. It resurrected the widely held view in the TAC and amongst scientists and activists around the world that his policies directly caused the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands South Africans. Estimates from Harvard University’s School of Public Health, for example, placed the unnecessary total cost of lives at approximately 330,000.
In this regard, he still has a case to answer.
A good start would be for him to offer an apology to the nation for all the damage he has done and continues to do. “And if he is not prepared to apologise”, said Anele Yawa, General Secretary of the TAC, “we will make sure that his denialism and the thousands of deaths that resulted is the only thing that he will ever be remembered for.”
We call on the ANC and the government to condemn and publicly distance themselves from his comments.
“As abhorrent a human as Mbeki is, we as TAC volunteer our services to help him undergo introductory treatment literacy lessons at one of our branches in order to help him reform and start being a force for good, instead of a comic book villain”, concluded Yawa.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Xabisa Qwabe: 076 850 6736 or via email xabisa.qwabe@tac.org.za
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