AIDS Activists Skeptical of South African Presidential Candidates
Activists are unhappy with the AIDS records of the two front-runner candidates as the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s governing party, plans to elect a new president at a conference that begins on December 23, reports the Mail & Guardian Online (mg.co.za, 12/14).
The front-runners—President Thabo Mbeki and ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma—have sparked debates about their ability to fight the country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“We are unhappy and uncomfortable about Mbeki's enormous failure to tackle the problem of HIV/AIDS in the past years,” said South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) spokesperson Mark Heywood, who adds in the article that TAC supports neither of the two candidates. “As for Zuma, some of his public statements on HIV/AIDS and gender issues call for anxiety.”
TAC and other groups have been at odds with Mbeki for years; he recently caused controversy by questioning the link between HIV and AIDS and has faced accusations of corruption and mismanagement.
The article reports that Zuma, meanwhile, has made sexist and homophobic comments. It says that he also once told a court that he showered after having sex with an allegedly HIV-positive woman to protect himself from the virus. At the time, Zuma was the head of the National AIDS Council.
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Beth Benne, RN, is HIV negative, but
the virus has impacted her life. She currently supervises a biannual HIV/AIDS awareness week as
the director of the student health center at Pierce College, a
community commuter school in Woodland Hills, California.
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Overheard in the Women's Forum
"I think that it's OK to be angry. I am sometimes—it's natural—we are HIV positive. but I always try to not let myself stay there too long. Let yourself feel you are human. You should not beat yourself up about being angry."
