Aids Campaigner Calls on World Leaders to Speak Out Against Mbeki

A leading South African Aids campaigner has called on world leaders to speak out against the government of Thabo Mbeki, which he claimed was responsible for the continuing but unnecessary devastation wreaked in his country by Aids.

Eight hundred people die from Aids in South Africa every day, said Mark Heywood, of the Aids Law Project at Witwatersrand University and the Treatment Action Campaign (Tac). "We're treating only 17% of people with Aids. What is happening in South Africa is a human rights violation that needs leadership from outside of South Africa to address the crisis being created by the South African government."

But, he said at the International Aids Conference in Toronto yesterday, there was "a terrible silence" from the rest of the world. "Bill Clinton can't get the words out of his mouth to criticise Thabo Mbeki. Kofi Annan can't criticise Thabo Mbeki ... The long-term consequences for South Africa are enormous.

"This crisis has to be broken somehow. The African Union and the G8 and the EU have to speak out about it. The British government, who are silent on this question, have to find a way to intervene."

South Africa has 200,000 people taking antiretroviral drugs for Aids, of whom 130,000 are treated in the public sector. But it is estimated that 700,000 people with HIV need the drugs and will soon die without them.

Mr Heywood said there had been a lack of government will to roll out the treatment programme, in the wake of Mr Mbeki's public assertions that he did not believe HIV caused Aids, and more recently, the comments from his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, that she had more faith in lemon and garlic to treat Aids than antiretroviral drugs.

South Africa had no prevention plan, said Mr Heywood, the last one having expired in 2005. He said he found being a member of the country's National Aids Council "incredibly uncomfortable" because the government "does not want to discuss the real issues".

On Thursday, Tac called for the health minister's resignation, precipitated, Mr Heywood said, by the death of a prisoner from Aids whom the South African courts had ordered must be treated.

"The prisoner died in the context of a court order saying the government should ensure that prisoners and others had access to treatment," he said. "The government played legal games. They appealed the judgment and then, when the court ordered he should be treated while the appeal was being heard, the government appealed that order."