Late one afternoon in Cape Town, three outspoken AIDS activists met at the tony Table Bay Hotel in Cape Town for a bull session that ended up lambasting President Thabo Mbeki, the new best friend of people who question whether HIV causes AIDS. "South Africans don't want to accept that AIDS is a reality," said Patricia de Lille, a Pan African Congress member of parliament who has urged leading politicians to reduce the stigma of AIDS by publicly taking an HIV test. "As long as we're in the denial stage and don't acknowledge we have a problem, we'll continue to have a problem." Costa Gazi (in shorts), an AIDS clinician and public health official, said too many of his colleagues are cowed by racial politics. "Black doctors are scared that if they speak out, they'll be called disloyal," said Gazi, who himself has been disciplined by the government because he accused the health minister of "manslaughter" for not providing AZT to HIV-infected, pregnant women. "White doctors are scared if they speak out they'll be called racist. A doctor has the duty to speak out. This is like 40 years ago when I was dismissed for speaking out about apartheid. This is 40 years old, man." Brett Anderson, a television producer who represents the National AIDS Convention of South Africa (an umbrella group of various nongovernmental organizations), had the last word. "I understand this disease more than Thabo Mbeki," said Anderson. "Why? Because I've got it."
(Photograph by Malcolm Linton)
