After the controversy that erupted this summer during an AIDS conference held in South Africa, you’d think the South African government would want to get all that behind it and move on, but instead for whatever reason government officials seem intent on denying that HIV causes AIDS and now appears off into conspiracy theories that AIDS was intentionally created by the West to lower the population of Africa.
Both strains came to a head last week when South African Health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang appeared on South African radio station 702 Talk Radio and refused to say whether or not she believed HIV causes AIDS. The BBC published the complete transcript of the contentious interview which is bizarre. Here’s a partial look at the highlights:
[702 Talk Radio Question]: … Do you accept that HIV causes AIDS?
[Tshabalala-Msimang]: Why do you ask me that question today? I have answer that question umpteen times.
[702 Talk]: Yes, and the answer is?
[Tshabalala-Msimang insists she’s already answered this question numerous times and doesn’t feel she needs to explain herself again]
[702 Talk]: So, therefore, you accept that HIV causes AIDS.
[Tshabalala-Msimang]: You are not going to put words into my mouth.
…
[702 Talk]: …I am asking you a question: does HIV cause AIDS?
[Tshabalala-Msimang]: I have been party to developing a strategic framework and that strategy testifies what my policy understandings of the HIV epidemic are. If you haven’t read that, please go and read it. And then you will understand where I depart from…
[702 Talk]: Manto, Manto. A simple yes or no is the answer I am looking for.
[Tshabalala-Msimang]: You will not force me into a corner into saying yes or no.
Here the Health Minster of South Africa who is supposed to be the first line of defense in solving that nation’s HIV problems who won’t say unequivocally whether she believes HIV causes AIDS. The African National Congress’ major contribution was to call for the firing of the radio interviewer, John Robbie, which was odd given that a Cape Town newspaper had recently published parts of a leaked ANC report hat insisted “the predominant scientific view that HIV causes AIDS is the view that the ANC, its leadership and its membership has to publicly express.”
At the end of the interview, after Manto walks off in frustration, Robbie ripped her and other officials for circulating conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS. This surfaced a few days before when a document that Tshabalala-Msimang distributed a document to senior officials that included materials claiming that AIDS was part of an international conspiracy wipe out Africa’s population.
As Robbie put it at the end of his broadcast,
Here we have a document where the minister of health sends out a document, amongst others, that is loony tunes, that suggests that the Illuminati have conspired with the aliens to bring about AIDS to reduce the African population.
Now you get the minister on to explain this and see what happens.
Given that the president has led, not just in South Africa, but a complete world controversy, where many people think this country has been held up to ridicule at an international conference over this issue and given the proximity of the two, I thought it would be a good idea to get the minister in on this issue..
The fact that she would not answer that question leads me to be very, very worried indeed. I find that bizarre.
Bizarre pretty much captures the entire South African response to its AIDS crisis.
Sources:
‘Don’t call me Manto’. The BBC, September 14, 2000.
SA government steps into AIDS row. The BBC, September 14, 2000.