Editing Thabo Mbeki (section)

==== 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>