Celebrating [or not] 20 years of life

It would be truly embarrassing for me to lie and say where I was on 11 February in 1990. Truth is I do not know. I was young enough to even realise what was happening around me. But yes something big, huge, spectacular did happen that day. Nelson Rholihlala Mandela was released from Victor Vester prison in Paarl.

This amazing and eloquently humble human being spent almost three decades of his life surrounded by the walls of jail. He rejected several offers by the apartheid government to release him. These offers strict had conditions which would have undermined his and the collective efforts of the liberation movements to free the oppressed civilians.

Now 20 years since that day, what has changed? I ask myself. It is an undisputable fact that much has been done to develop the nation and its people. While many would say that very little has been done to protect & preserve the lives of many people. I prefer to put it this way ‘much has been done to let our innocent mothers, brother & sisters thin away into their last breaths’. Nonchalantly put, HIV/AIDS was the cause. While I don’t dispute this scientific actuality, immense contributions to the atrocities of HIV/AIDS were choices made under the era of former President Thabo Mbeki.

While as President, Mr Mbeki worked tirelessly, spending late nights in his parliament office surfing the internet seeking to expand his knowledge to be able to rationalise his stance on HIV/AIDS. Take nothing away from the man. This being holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of Sussex in London and posses wealth of intellect. Hence he managed to change the views of many of his incumbents about HIV/AIDS. Mbeki believed and made others believe that HIV does not cause AIDS.

Former Health Minister [may her soul rest in peace] Manto Tshabalala-Msimang worked in the health units of the liberation movements. She succeeded Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma [in 1999] who was the first health minister in the new democratic republic. The mind-boggling and quite understandably so matter is that both never believed that HIV does not cause AIDS until they met the powerful intellectual persuasion of Thabo Mbeki. Dlamini-Zuma exonerated herself when she warned her “Boss” when she left office the health office to occupy one for foreign affairs [now international relations] in the early millennium that if inactions in combating the carnage caused by HIV/AIDS continued, millions and millions will also continue to die.

Tshabalala and Mbeki [both] single-handedly allowed millions of us to suffer physical and emotional scares of HIV/AIDS. Together they disallowed internationally and locally tested vaccines produced to treat HIV/AIDS from being distributed in SA. Some European powerhouses even promised to distribute these for free. Mbeki and his health minister still did not allow them, citing reasons of more tests needing to be done or un-affordability thereof [even though they spent R50 billion on arms while not under any kind or internal or external threat]. Mbeki also said that Africans were used as guinea pigs for Western medical tests. Tshabalala went on to prefer medicinal advice for HIV treatment by self-proclaimed and internationally banned 'doctor' who is not registered under any medical registration council anywhere in the universe, Matthias Rath and not only allowed distribution of his untested methods but also vehemently advocated their efficacy.

In Mbeki’s office in parliament, while they were also rebuffing that HIV causes AIDS and the efficacy of its treatment, a number of his office bearers were HIV positive and secretly on ARV’s even though they later died. This included Mbeki’s late spokesperson, Parks Mankahlane. Mbeki refused point blank all the calls for him to act as leader and take an HIV test, fearing that he might either prove himself or others wrong.

Now I leave you to ponder further in these possibilities.

• Mbeki may be HIV positive and is in strong denial of his state
• He was aware of the dying state [until the final second] of his office bearers and could not take that as it were his servants
• He may have lost a close relative to HIV/AIDS and has still not gotten over his loss

This would, to me, be the most psychologically fitting explanations of Mbeki’s denialism of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

That’s it from me... now I’m going to contact some recruitment agencies in case I loose my job over this account!!!