Open letter to Thabo Mbeki

Dear Thabo Mbeki,

In your message to the South African people this week introducing the ANC’s local government manifesto you spoke about many vital issues that are close to our hearts and urgently in need of the government’s attention. You spoke of halving unemployment and poverty, of speeding up service delivery and increasing local government efficiency and accountably. All admirable aims, but where is your plan for addressing a health crisis that threatens to wipe out millions of South Africans?

You speak of your commitment to realizing “the goal of a better life for all” and to ensuring that “all South Africans are fully able to enjoy the full dignity of freedom” without once acknowledging the reality that by 2014 many millions of South Africans may not be around to enjoy a better life or the benefits of democracy because they will have died of treatable AIDS-related illnesses.

AIDS is already taking a devastating toll in lives in this country and yet in the entire manifesto, HIV/AIDs makes one cameo appearance, featuring third in a list of diseases that government promises “fewer people will be victims of” in the coming decade. That is simply not enough when six and a half million South Africans are infected with HIV, more than any other country in the world, and the majority of them don’t even know it.

How much longer do the South African people have to wait before you make fighting this epidemic a priority for your government that features in every manifesto you issue and in regular public statements? This level of commitment and openness has had proven impacts in countries like Botswana, Uganda and Kenya, often in more resource-poor settings than South Africa.

According to the latest UN AIDS Epidemic Update, the stigma attached to HIV and AIDS remains perhaps the most difficult obstacle to effective HIV prevention. Instead of attempting to reduce stigma by speaking openly and frequently about AIDS or taking the step of publicly testing and so setting an example to those who look to you for leadership on this issue, you have more than likely contributed to stigma by remaining resolutely silent on the topic.

This manifesto is yet another missed opportunity to put HIV and AIDS at the top of your agenda and uppermost in the minds of the people you are asking to assist you in building “a better life for all.” So far, people have responded to this epidemic to the extent that they are able to. Grandmothers are using their pensions to care for their orphaned grandchildren; village and township women with only the most basic health training are providing door-to-door home-based care to AIDS patients for little or no salary; and community-based organizations depend on private donations to feed and care for people sickened by the virus.

But there is only so much people can do considering that in most cases they lack the training, resources, life-saving medications and financial support that only the government can provide.

If you really want to honour and uphold your much touted “People’s Contract,” why not begin with acknowledging the scale of the HIV/AIDS crisis and then truly working in partnership with the people to address it.