Thabo Mbeki

Thabo Mbeki. Photo: Tara Turkington

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s role in the fight against HIV/AIDS has been subjected to intense scrutiny. He was president (1999 – 2008) during the steep rise of the pandemic.

His first few years as deputy president (1994 – 1999) were uneventful. He headed the Inter-Ministerial Committee on HIV/AIDS, established in 1997 and replaced in 2000 by the SA National AIDS Council.

He also launched the Partnership Against AIDS in October 1998, saying in his declaration, “For too long we have closed our eyes as a nation, hoping the truth was not so real” and that HIV/AIDS is “carried and transmitted by human beings”.

Mbeki’s first controversial move came in 1997 when he promoted the cause of Virodene, an experimental anti-retroviral drug that has since been proved to have no antiviral effects.

By October 1999, Mbeki’s distrust of Western medicine and conventional science had become apparent. Responding to pressure for public sector anti-retroviral treatment, particularly in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, Mbeki called for an investigation into the toxicity of the then-prominent anti-retroviral drug, AZT.

In 2000 Mbeki established the Presidential Advisory Panel on AIDS to investigate and discuss, among other things, whether HIV causes AIDS. Just under half of the panel members were AIDS dissidents, according to an article by Michael Cherry, in the respected scientific journal, Nature.

But by mid-2002, Mbeki had publicly distanced himself from HIV/AIDS dissidents and refrained from making public comments against official policy. However, in 2003 debate reignited over Mbeki’s stance when in an interview with The BBC, he said, “Personally, I don’t know anybody who has died of AIDS.”

Mbeki has been very quiet on HIV/AIDS in recent years and is reluctant to speak about anti-retroviral therapy.