South African President Thabo Mbeki's Deniel on AIDS Led to 365,000 Deaths

A Harvard University study estimates that 365,000 people in South Africa suffered a premature death due to their government inaction for years. The South African government under former president THabo Mbeki for years denied the scientific consensus on AIDS and did not provide its people with anti-retroviral drugs or drugs that would have prevented pregnant women with AIDS from infecting their children.

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Thabo Mbeki was notorious in his denial of the science behind AIDS and often responded that Western lecturing was nothing more than racism that implied that somehow African men were incontrollable sexual beasts. In the end, it was his own people who suffered a horrific fate.

The study noted that had drugs been provided, most of the now dead 365,000 people would be alive.

Even as neighboring Botswana and Namibia were providing their people with drugs even though they had a far less severe epidemic, South Africa for years denied any drug assistance.

The government is now changing policy particularly due to the fact that Mr. Mbeki is no longer president after his party ousted from leadership of the African National Congress - Nelson Mendale's party - in September.

Mbeki's successor Kgalema Motlanthe is crippling with the consequences of his predecessor's denial. That is why he has moved swiftly to put South Africa on track to properly combating AIDS. On the first day on the job - which started two months ago - he removed the Heath Minister, a woman who proposed garlic and lemon juice, among other novelties, as a way to treat AIDS. She was replaced by a Barbara Hogan, a former anti-apartheid resistance figure, who was worked to bring South Africa back into the AIDS-treatment consensus.

"I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying. The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa," he stated to The New York Times

Let us hope so for the people of South Africa.