South Africa: Mbeki's New HIV/Aids Focus is Applauded, PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki's move to repackage SA's fight against HIV/AIDS seems to be paying off. Mbeki has earned himself a breather from calls to sack his bungling health minister by placing Deputy President Phumzile-Mlambo Ngcuka in charge of managing the pandemic.

Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang have become objects of ridicule both here and abroad for their unorthodox and often denialist views on HIV/AIDS.


In contrast Mlambo-Ngcuka received rapturous applause at a stakeholder conference on Friday in Johannesburg when she said that the bickering between role players had set the country back in its fight against the disease.

Government's new anti-AIDS drive is also beginning to win international recognition. On Friday a report in the US-based Washington Post hailed what it called SA's "dramatic shift on AIDS".

"The beetroot and all that lemon stuff is out the window. These guys are now serious about getting it right," an adviser involved in recasting government's policy told the influential daily.

He was referring to Tshabalala-Msimang's much-ridiculed obsession with vegetables as a method to manage the disease.

Organisers of this weekend's conference said the minister, who was discharged from hospital on Friday after suffering from a lung ailment, was not invited to the conference to ensure unity and no controversy.

In September, after an United Nations AIDS conference where Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, accused the South African government of expounding HIV/AIDS theories "more worthy of a lunatic fringe than a concerned and compassionate state".

The attack, aided by internal pressure from labour and civic groups prompted Mbeki to announce a shake-up which sidelined Tshabalala-Msimang and established an inter-ministerial committee to oversee the implementation of the comprehensive plan against HIV/AIDS. The plan included reviving the South African National AIDS Council (Sanac), now headed by Mlambo-Ngcuka.

A council workshop on Tuesday will help to plot the way forward.

The AIDS conference, attended by a number of civil society groups, including the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the South African Council of Churches, as well as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), aims to come up with a plan to help government curb HIV/AIDS.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told the deputy president: "Now you've come and you have been brilliant... It looks like the days of marching against the government (on being ineffective regarding HIV/AIDS) are over. We are happy people."


Vavi said SA was facing a disaster regarding HIV/AIDS, and the bold leadership and unified action needed was finally taking place.

TAC general secretary Sipho Mthathi saluted the spirit with which Mlambo-Ngcuka has approached the AIDS pandemic.

More than 5-million of SA's 47-million people are thought to be living with HIV, which is one of the highest infection rates in the world. Over 1000 people die of AIDS everyday.