'Too late for Mbeki genocide charge'
2009-11-23 15:41
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Mbombela - The doctor who was fired for giving ARVs to rape victims says it is too late to charge former president Thabo Mbeki for genocide.
Malcolm Naude was responding to the call by the Young Communist League that Mbeki and "his Aids denialists" be prosecuted for failure to provide thousands of South African Aids sufferers with life-saving ARVs.
According to Naude, these denialists include people such as former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and former Mpumalanga health MEC Sibongile Manana.
"I do think Manana has a lot to answer for, and so does Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang. Their actions have had terrible consequences for many, many people, but what good would prosecuting them do?
"Will it bring back our dead? Will it strengthen our resolve to fight this dreaded disease?" asked Naude.
"I have often wondered what I would say to these people, but now I am just sad for them. They will have to answer to a higher power, and I do not know how they will explain themselves," he said.
MEC refused to provide ARVs
As health MEC between 2001 and 2004, Manana refused to provide ARVs to women who have been raped, and persecuted doctors who did so.
She also kicked out an NGO, the Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project, which ran a rape crisis centre at Rob Ferreira Hospital and funded the ARV prescriptions.
Naude was fired by Manana in 2001 because he continued to prescribe ARVs to women who had been raped.
He took Manana and the Mpumalanga Department of Health to the Braamfontein Labour Court for unfair and discriminatory dismissal, arguing that he was following his conscience as a doctor and politicians should not interfere with doctors' professional judgment.
In October last year, the court found that Naude had been unfairly dismissed and ordered that the department pay him R100 000.
Naude said the judgment meant that the court recognised the personal and professional sacrifices he had made.
Political choice 'unethical'
"I was very pleased with the Labour Court ruling. For me, it was an affirmation that there are institutions that still have a sense of moral righteousness, and that people still care that we were doing the right thing.
"It meant that doing the right thing did not always mean being politically correct because, in 2001, the politically correct thing was morally and ethically incorrect, maybe even evil," added Naude.
Received award for decision
On October 30 this year, Naude received the SA Medical Association's award for The Spirit of Medicine for his contribution to the fight against HIV/Aids.
"I was greatly honoured and humbled to receive such a wonderful recognition from my peers. I hope that this inspires my younger colleagues, new to the profession, to rise to the great heights of service this profession offers.
"It is a great thing to be able to serve your community," he said.
Naude, who has practised in Australia since last year, said Mbeki's administration had been offered a great opportunity to become a world leader in the fight against HIV/Aids but it had "dropped the ball".
"I am saddened by all those poor patients we could have saved form contracting HIV, the children ... It is a heavy burden to carry, one that has changed many lives, doctors and patients alike. We cannot undo it," he said.
The co-ordinator of the Treatment Action Campaign in Mpumalanga, Bheki Khoza, said Manana had failed to use common sense, which led to the HIV disaster the province is facing.
"She did not think about the consequences of her actions regarding HIV when she was health MEC. She failed dismally because she was trying to impress her boss [Mbeki]," said Khoza.
In a press conference earlier this month, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi also blamed Manana for the increase in the number of HIV-positive babies in Mpumalanga.
"I don't think we would have been here if we had approached the problem in a different way. Our attitude to HIV/Aids has put us where we are," said Motsoaledi.
- African Eye