Editing Thabo Mbeki (section)

=== HIV/AIDS ===
{{See also|HIV/AIDS in South Africa}}

==== Policy and treatment ====
According to political scientist [[Jeffrey Herbst]], Mbeki's HIV/AIDS policies were "bizarre at best, severely negligent at worst."<ref name="Herbst-2005" /> In 2000, amid a burgeoning [[HIV/AIDS]] epidemic in South Africa, Mbeki's government launched the ''HIV/AIDS/[[Sexually transmitted infection|STD]] Strategic Plan for South Africa, 2000–2005'', a "multi-sectoral" plan which was criticised by HIV/AIDS activists for lacking concrete timeframes and failing to commit to [[Management of HIV/AIDS|antiretroviral treatment]] programmes.<ref name="Butler-2005">{{Cite journal|last=Butler|first=Anthony|date=2005-09-08|title=South Africa's HIV/AIDS policy, 1994–2004: How can it be explained?|url=https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/104/417/591/32035|journal=African Affairs|volume=104|issue=417|pages=591–614|doi=10.1093/afraf/adi036|doi-access=free}}</ref> Indeed, according to economist [[Nicoli Nattrass]], resistance to the roll-out of antiretroviral drugs for prevention and treatment became central to the HIV/AIDS policy of Mbeki's government in subsequent years.<ref name="Nattrass-2008">{{cite journal|last1=Nattrass|first1=Nicoli|date=2008-02-07|title=AIDS and the Scientific Governance of Medicine in Post-Apartheid South Africa|journal=African Affairs|volume=107|issue=427|pages=157–176|doi=10.1093/afraf/adm087|doi-access=free}}</ref> A national [[Vertically transmitted infection|mother-to-child transmission]] prevention programme was not introduced until 2002, when it was mandated by the [[Constitutional Court of South Africa|Constitutional Court]] in response to a successful legal challenge by the [[Treatment Action Campaign]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Honermann|first=Brian|date=2012-07-05|title=A judgment that saved a million lives|url=https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/a-judgment-that-saved-a-million-lives-1334636|access-date=2022-02-03|website=The Star|language=en}}</ref> Similarly, chronic highly active antiretroviral therapy for AIDS-sick people was not introduced in the public [[Healthcare in South Africa|healthcare system]] until late 2003, reportedly at the insistence of some members of [[First Cabinet of Thabo Mbeki|Mbeki's cabinet]].<ref name="Nattrass-2008"/> According to Nattrass, better access to antiretroviral drugs in South Africa could have prevented about 171,000 HIV infections and 343,000 deaths between 1999 and 2007.<ref name="Nattrass-2008"/> In November 2008, a [[Harvard University]] study estimated that more than 330,000 people died between 2000 and 2005 due to insufficient antiretroviral programmes under Mbeki's government.<ref name="Chigwedere-2008">{{Cite journal|last1=Chigwedere|first1=Pride|last2=Seage|first2=George R.|last3=Gruskin|first3=Sofia|last4=Lee|first4=Tun-Hou|last5=Essex|first5=M.|date=2008-12-01|title=Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa|journal=Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes|volume=49|issue=4|pages=410–415|doi=10.1097/qai.0b013e31818a6cd5|issn=1525-4135|pmid=19186354|s2cid=11458278 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Even after these programmes were introduced, Mbeki's appointee as Minister of Health, [[Manto Tshabalala-Msimang]], continued to advocate publicly for unproven alternative treatments in place of antiretrovirals, leading to continual calls by civil society for her dismissal.<ref name="Nattrass-2008"/> In late 2006, [[Second Cabinet of Thabo Mbeki|the cabinet]] transferred responsibility for AIDS policy from Tshabalala-Msimang to Deputy President [[Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka]], who subsequently spearheaded a new draft National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS.<ref name="Nattrass-2008"/><ref>{{cite web|last=McGreal|first=Chris|date=2006-11-30|title=South Africa ends long denial over Aids crisis|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/30/southafrica.aids|access-date=2022-02-03|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref>

==== Association with denialism ====
{{See also|HIV/AIDS denialism in South Africa}}[[File:Aids Conference Durban.jpg|thumb|240x240px|Protest poster at the [[XIII International AIDS Conference, 2000|XIII International AIDS Conference]] in [[Durban]], July 2000.|left]]
While president, Mbeki was also criticised for his public messaging on [[HIV/AIDS in South Africa|HIV/AIDS]]. He was viewed as sympathetic to or influenced by the views of a small minority of scientists who challenged the scientific consensus that HIV caused AIDS and that [[antiretroviral drugs]] were the most effective means of treatment.<ref>{{cite web|last=Boseley|first=Sarah|date=2008-11-26|title=Mbeki Aids denial 'caused 300,000 deaths'|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/26/aids-south-africa|access-date=2022-02-04|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=McGreal|first=Chris|date=2001-06-12|title=Mbeki's part in AIDS catastrophe|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/12/aids.chrismcgreal|access-date=2022-02-04|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> In an April 2000 letter to UN secretary-general [[Kofi Annan]] and the heads of state of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France, Mbeki pointed to differences in how the AIDS epidemic had manifested in Africa and in the West, and committed to "the search for specific and targeted responses to the specifically African incidence of HIV-AIDS."<ref name="Frontline-2020">{{cite web|title=Thabo Mbeki's Letter|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/docs/mbeki.html|access-date=2022-02-04|website=Frontline: The Age of AIDS|publisher=PBS}}</ref> He also defended scientists who had challenged the scientific consensus on AIDS: {{blockquote|Not long ago, in our own country, people were killed, tortured, imprisoned and prohibited from being quoted in private and in public because the established authority believed that their views were dangerous and discredited. We are now being asked to do precisely the same thing that the racist apartheid tyranny we opposed did, because, it is said, there exists a scientific view that is supported by the majority, against which dissent is prohibited... People who otherwise would fight very hard to defend the critically important rights of freedom of thought and speech occupy, with regard to the HIV-AIDS issue, the frontline in the campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism...<ref name="Frontline-2020" /> }}The letter was leaked to ''[[The Washington Post]]'' and caused controversy.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cherry|first=Michael|date=2000-04-01|title=Letter fuels South Africa's AIDS furore|journal=Nature|language=en|volume=404|issue=6781|page=911|doi=10.1038/35010218|pmid=10801091|s2cid=4312105|issn=1476-4687|doi-access=free}}</ref> During the same period, Mbeki convened a panel to investigate the cause of AIDS, staffed by researchers who believed that AIDS was caused by malnutrition and parasites as well as by orthodox researchers.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Daley|first=Suzanne|date=2000-05-14|title=The World: AIDS in South Africa; A President Misapprehends a Killer|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/14/weekinreview/the-world-aids-in-south-africa-a-president-misapprehends-a-killer.html|access-date=2022-02-04|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> In July 2000, opening the [[XIII International AIDS Conference, 2000|13th International AIDS Conference]] in [[Durban]], he proposed that the "disturbing phenomenon of the [[Immunodeficiency|collapse of immune systems]] among millions of our people" was the result of various factors, especially poverty, and that "we could not blame everything on a single virus."<ref>{{cite web|last=Mbeki|first=Thabo|date=2000-07-09|title=Speech at the Opening Session of the 13th International AIDS Conference|url=http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/2000/tm0709.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828203441/http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/2000/tm0709.html|archive-date=2008-08-28|access-date=2022-02-04|website=African National Congress}}</ref> It was characteristic of Mbeki's stance on HIV/AIDS to draw attention to socioeconomic differences between the West and Africa, emphasising the importance of poverty in poor health outcomes in Africa, and to insist that African countries should not be asked blindly to accept Western scientific theories and policy models. Commentators speculate that his stance was motivated by suspicion of the West and was a response to what he perceived as [[Ethnic stereotype|racist stereotypes]] of the continent and its people.<ref name="pbs">{{cite magazine|last=Power|first=Samantha|year=2003|title=The AIDS Rebel|url=https://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/stateofdenial/special_rebel.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081228233856/http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/stateofdenial/special_rebel.html|archive-date=28 December 2008|access-date=23 November 2006|magazine=The New Yorker}}</ref><ref name="aidsonline">{{cite journal|last=Schneider|first=Helen|author2=Fassin, Didier|year=2002|title=Denial and defiance: a socio-political analysis of AIDS in South Africa|url=http://www.aidsonline.com/pt/re/aids/fulltext.00002030-200216004-00007.htm|journal=AIDS Supplement|volume=16|issue=Supplement 4|pages=S45–S51|doi=10.1097/00002030-200216004-00007|pmid=12698999|access-date=23 November 2006|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Camp|first=Emma|date=2016-04-12|title=Thabo Mbeki's AIDS Denialism: Neoliberalism, Government and Civil Society in South Africa|url=https://lucas.leeds.ac.uk/article/thabo-mbekis-aids-denialism-emma-camp/|access-date=2022-02-04|website=Leeds African Studies Bulletin (77)|publisher=University of Leeds|language=en-GB}}</ref> For example, in October 2001, in a speech at the [[University of Fort Hare]], he said of the West: "Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust."<ref>{{cite web|date=2001-10-26|title=Mbeki in bizarre Aids outburst|url=https://mg.co.za/article/2001-10-26-mbeki-in-bizarre-aids-outburst/|access-date=2022-02-04|website=The Mail & Guardian|language=en-ZA}}</ref>

Mbeki announced in October 2000 that he would withdraw from the public debate on HIV/AIDS science,<ref name="Butler-2005" /><ref name="aidsonline" /> and in 2002 his cabinet staunchly affirmed that HIV causes AIDS.<ref>{{cite web|date=2002-04-17|title=Statement on Cabinet meeting of 17 April 2002|url=https://www.gcis.gov.za/content/newsroom/media-releases/cabinet-statements/statement-cabinet-meeting-17-april-2002-1|access-date=2022-02-04|website=Government Communication and Information System (GCIS)}}</ref> However, critics claimed that he continued to influence – and impede – HIV/AIDS policy, a charge which Mbeki denied.<ref name="mg2005mar">{{cite web|last=Deane|first=Nawaal|date=2005-03-25|title=Mbeki dismisses Rath|url=http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=200272&area=/insight/insight__national/|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070312053446/http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=200272&area=%2Finsight%2Finsight__national%2F|archive-date=12 March 2007|access-date=23 November 2006|work=Mail & Guardian|df=dmy-all}}</ref> AIDS activist [[Zackie Achmat]] said in 2002 that "Mbeki epitomizes leadership in denial and his stand has fuelled government inaction."<ref name="aidsonline" /> Gevisser writes that in 2007 Mbeki continued to defend his position on HIV/AIDS, and directed Gevisser to a controversial and anonymous ANC discussion document titled [[Castro Hlongwane, Caravans, Cats, Geese, Foot & Mouth and Statistics|''Castro Hlongwane, Caravans, Cats, Geese, Foot & Mouth and Statistics: HIV/Aids and the Struggle for the Humanisation of the African'']].<ref name="gucm2007">{{cite news|last=McGreal|first=Chris|date=6 November 2007|title=Mbeki admits he is still Aids dissident six years on|work=The Guardian|location=UK|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/06/southafrica.aids|access-date=18 April 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=2007-11-06|title=Mbeki 'still Aids dissident'|url=https://www.news24.com/news24/mbeki-still-aids-dissident-20071106|access-date=2022-02-04|website=News24|language=en-US}}</ref> The Gevisser biography also says that, while Mbeki never explicitly [[HIV/AIDS denialism|denied the link between HIV and AIDS]], he is a "profound sceptic"<ref name="gucm2007" /> – as Mbeki himself wrote in 2016, in a newsletter cautioning "great care and caution" in the use of antiretrovirals, he had not denied that HIV caused AIDS but that "a virus [could] cause a syndrome."<ref>{{cite web|last=Gaffey|first=Conor|date=2016-03-08|title=Ex-South African President Thabo Mbeki stands by his controversial HIV comments|url=https://www.newsweek.com/thabo-mbeki-south-africa-hiv-aids-434745|access-date=2022-02-04|website=Newsweek|language=en}}</ref> He is generally referred to as an HIV/AIDS "dissident" rather than an outright denialist, although Nattrass questions the value of that distinction.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Nattrass|first=Nicoli|date=2007|title=AIDS Denialism vs. Science|url=https://skepticalinquirer.org/2007/09/aids-denialism-vs-science/|journal=Skeptical Inquirer|volume=31|issue=5}}</ref>