If there was one thing South Africa needed after the past few turbulent decades, it was a time of stability under a reliable President. Unfortunately what it got was Thabo Mbeki who has just been removed from power by his own ANC Party.
Faith in the ability of Mbeki to Govern wisely quickly evaporated in what will remain his over-riding legacy even above his corrupt dealings with arms dealers, the treacherous and deadly stance over the AIDS issue.
Stating that he didn't believe HIV caused Aids and it was a conspiracy of the pharmaceutical companies and the CIA against him, Mbeki set about blocking the distribution of anti-Aids antiretroviral drugs claiming that they were poisonous.
Hundreds of thousands of adults and children were condemned to die while Mbeki refused to advocate the use of condoms to resist the spread of the deadly disease and distributed documents that claimed the drugs were actually an attempt to commit genocide against black people.
He compared Aids scientists to latter-day Nazi concentration camp doctors and portrayed black people who accepted AIDs science as self-repressed victims of a slave mentality.
Now the leadership passes to Mbeki's former deputy, Jacob Zuma who during a court trial where he was accused of raping a HIV sufferer, admitted to having unprotected sex with his accuser but claimed that he took a shower afterwards to "cut the risk of contracting HIV". Zuma at the time headed the National AIDS Council.
Out of the frying pan and back into the frying pan it seems.
1 comment:
yip mbeki is gone. he really wasnt a bad president. he took some silly stances and made some stupid comments, other than that he was a good president who created an environment that allowed for sustained economic growth during his entire stay in office.
with regard to his so called stance on aids: his comments were taken completely out of context.
you must understand that for a good few years now he has been sidelined by his own party. i think because of this he diverted a lot of his attention to foreign matters.
people will realise what a solid president he was when the new administration comes into power.
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