ANC pressed on AIDS `holocaust'

JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's AIDS crisis grabbed the campaign spotlight yesterday as a powerful political challenger accused President Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress of standing idle as a "holocaust" engulfs the country.

South Africa's biggest AIDS pressure group, meanwhile, threatened to take the government to court before the April 14 elections unless it begins a promised public rollout of AIDS-fighting drugs.

Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose Inkatha Freedom Party, or IFP, is the country's second-largest black-led political party, said Mbeki's AIDS policy had led to disaster.

"HIV/AIDS alone is an issue which demands and dictates a profound change in the leadership of our country," Buthelezi said in a Durban speech outlining the IFP's AIDS policy. "South Africa faces a holocaust, and its leaders are complacent."

South Africa has the world's largest HIV/AIDS caseload with an estimated 5.3 million of its 45 million people infected.

Activists estimate about 600 South Africans die of AIDS each day, and the number of children orphaned by AIDS is projected to reach some 2 million by 2010.

Mbeki's government has been criticized frequently for moving too slowly against the epidemic and only last year pledged to provide antiretroviral drugs in the public sector -- although this has not yet begun. While the ANC is virtually guaranteed a strong win in the April polls, both the IFP and the official opposition Democratic Alliance have pledged to make AIDS a campaign issue, hoping to give voice to deepening public anger over the crisis.

In his toughest broadside to date, Buthelezi said yesterday the ANC government had mishandled the AIDS epidemic "with almost criminal negligence."

"The real crisis with HIV/AIDS is that it became engulfed in a most pernicious and insane syndrome of denial," he said.

Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang have in the past questioned the link between HIV and AIDS and rejected widespread use of antiretroviral drugs as too expensive, potentially toxic, and difficult to take.

The government says it is now ready to introduce the drugs but is moving cautiously to ensure the program is properly implemented. Activists say they fear the government is still not fully committed to the treatment program.

The Treatment Action Campaign, which has led public pressure on the government, said yesterday it would go to court to force the government to act now.

"We will defend the rights of people living with HIV whether there is an election or not. . . . We will not pull our punches because it is an election," Zackie Achmat, the organization's head, said at a public meeting in Cape Town. "We are preparing a court case, and we will be in court in the next two weeks if necessary."

Buthelezi, who serves in Mbeki's Cabinet as interior minister under an arrangement expected to end after the election, said it was already too late for many South Africans affected by the AIDS crisis.

"No sudden U-turn in the government policy can compensate for the cost millions of South Africans have already had to pay for the government's apathy and failure," he said.