Mbeki questions Aids stats
2004-02-08 21:57
Jan-Jan Joubert and Willem Jordaan
Cape Town - President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday questioned the extent of HIV/Aids deaths, because of the absence of statistics on the causes of death in South Africa.
After Mbeki did not focus on HIV/Aids and Zimbabwe in his State of the Nation address on Friday, he was bombarded with questions on these issues in an interview with the SABC on Sunday.
In his reaction, Mbeki said he would address the two issues in a second State address after the election.
Reacting to a question on his personal roll in government's fight against the pandemic, Mbeki indicated that deputy president Jacob Zuma was handling the matter on government's behalf.
He said that the allocation to HIV/Aids in the budget showed that "few countries were doing as much as South Africa".
When asked whether it wouldn't help if he personally showed more empathy with sufferers of the disease, Mbeki retorted that he had said a lot about the issue and that government's stance on the matter remained unchanged.
"Tuberculosis is also a big problem. My doctors say there is a diabetes epidemic. Why does nobody talk about it? There are many health issues."
When it was put to him that these diseases were treatable while HIV/Aids was not, he said: "No, that is not the reason".
Interviewer Redi Diareko quoted statistics of the World Health Organisation and exclaimed: "This is our country about which these findings were made. You are our leader ..."
Mbeki responded that the WHO could speak for itself, but that South Africa did not have reliable statistics on causes of deaths. He said he wanted something more than mathematical calculations - information on death certificates.
Zimbabwe
Mbeki was also questioned on progress with the crisis in Zimbabwe.
He said Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had been involved in "informal dialogue" for a while and that a concept agenda for formal negotiations had been completed.
Mbeki said he expected that the process could be completed in the "next two months".
He added that Zimbabweans had to set their own goals, but that the Zimbabwean constitution, issues such as press freedom and the right to meet, as well as the economic crisis should receive priority.