Mbeki The War Criminal

After ten years of denying the connection between HIV and AIDS, the South African government through their new Health Minister Barbara Hogan, has admitted their mistake. For a decade, their former President Mbeki and his puppet former Health Minister Msimang conspired relatively well to deny it. Their intellectual apathy, targeted myopia and general dis-ingenuousness played dangerously to help continue the pandemic. Pushing holistic approaches, which when used singularly, cannot be an effective treatment for the virus, they battered their nation with their fortified and unified ignorance.

It is now estimated that South Africa has the world's highest numbers of people infected with HIV. Somehow, I see Mbeki's hand all over this. Fine, there are all sorts of cultural and ethnic issues that one can interject into this conversation. However, the biggest player in all of this was this President who was willing to stand in some of the most influential arenas in the world, spouting his ignorance. He displayed a critical nonchalance towards what has soon become the primary problem in his country and the continent.

In a country rich with natural resources, he has cheated its most important resource, the people of an opportunity to make a critical head start in the fight against AIDS. Still bruised from the hands of apartheid, South Africa now begins to be battered by this pandemic in epic proportions. As it rises entwined in the cloak of traditional taboos, ethnic stigma has given way to disease segregation. Many have been victimized and vilified for having the virus or dying because of it. Mbeki's refusal to provide the pandemic with its correct place in the national agenda and dialogue created the black sea of death, now the calling card of the pandemic. There is blood on Mbeki's hands.

Therefore I hereby propose that we take his @#$ to the Hague. He deserves nothing less than a trial by jury. He should be tried by a group of HIV positive mothers condemned to death for lack of medication and intervention. His charges? Meticulous foolishness, coupled by wanton disinterest. I would appreciate seeing him respond to prosecution questions about the evidence he had. How he was able to dispute proven medical theories and science. I would pay to watch him wallow as he looks at the pictures of a thin hollowed out soul ravaged by AIDS. All I know is that my dream may never come true and he will have to wait for his trial with God. However I am comforted because I'd hate to be him when the verdict gets read.