Mbeki’s lost AIDS letter

This accounting has been accepted by South Africa’s new Minister of
Health, Barbara Hogan, who told Celia Dugger of the New York Times "I
feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying … The
era of denialism is over completely in South Africa."

There is a lot that is known about Mbeki’s racially driven immersion in
AIDS pseudo-science. The ANC government’s involvement in the putative
AIDS cure Virodene – which led to the initial hostility to AZT and then
into denialism’ – has been documented in detail on this website (see
here.) For an article setting out Mbeki’s subsequent AIDS dissidence’
see here.

But there is much that still has to come out about the secret history
of that period. It is beginning to do so. As Dugger notes, since
Mbeki’s recall "stories about what happened inside the ANC have begun
to tumble out, offering unsettling glimpses of how South Africa’s AIDS
policies went so wrong."

One of the important missing documents has been the letter written by
Thabo Mbeki – with the help of Minister Essop Pahad and his legal
advisor, Mojanku Gumbi – to the head of the Medical Research Council
Professor William Makgoba. It was sent off under the name of – but not
signed by – the then Premier of Limpopo Ngoako Ramatlhodi.

Shortly thereafter Ramatlhodi had told Makgoba that he had been acting
"on behalf of a collective of the President, Pahad, and Mojanku." The
letter had been sent as a Word document to Makgoba and, it subsequently
emerged, the electronic signature on the document suggested that it had
been written on Mbeki’s personal computer. Under properties it had
stated: "Author: Thabo Mbeki", "Company: Office of the President".

Although the letter has been reported on before it has never been
published. However, a PDF version was posted along with Dugger’s New
York Times article on the cost of Mbeki’s AIDS policy. Ramatlhodi had
confirmed to Dugger the true origin of the letter. A transcription
follows below. It provides a vivid insight into President Mbeki’s state
of mind at the time, his racial paranoia and his hubris. (The
references to Mbeki in the third person were probably inserted at the
end of the drafting process.)

Mbeki’s letter to Makgoba:

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL 

December 11, 2000

Dear Professor Makgoba, 

I beg for your indulgence for writing this unsolicited letter to you.

It may well be that when you receive it you will not have time to read
it given your tight schedule However, I do request that you spare some
of your invaluable time to respond to the matters raised in this letter
in order to educate me and others so that we become more enlightened on
this issue I am about to raise. 

The matter I want to raise relates to this rather vexed issue of HIV/AIDS. 

You might ask why I pick on you in this regard. My impression is that
you have emerged as the towering authority on this issue. At least that
is how the liberal press in this country and elsewhere in the world
would have us believe. This is the reason why I thought it prudent to
initiate an intellectual debate with one who is becoming an arbiter on
a matter as serious as the one under consideration. 

I have no doubt that you would be fully aware of the unabating
character assassination our President has bean subjected to by the
media on this issue. The depth and scale of the assault is nothing less
than a public lynching of the head of state and government. What
concerns me and others like me is that this media uses you as the
counterveiling and educated voice of scientific truth and sanity, that
is opposed to the uneducated and irrational voice of President Thabo
Mbeki.

The point about this particular matter is that whereas the persuasive
influence of political assertions depends greatly on popular beliefs
and convictions, the validity of scientific truths does not depend on
opinion polls. 

One of the peculiar things about the controversy that has raged around
the head of President Mbeki on the issue of HIV/AIDS is that this
truism has been turned on its head. 

In this rather strange situation, the politician seems to be searching
for the truth, regardless of the content of popular belief, which is a
fundamental matter with regard to the politician’s obligation to win
votes in elections, and therefore survive as a successful politician. 

On the other hand, the scientists who differ with him seem to justify
their "scientific" propositions on the base that opinion polls, among
scientists and the ordinary people, demonstrate popular support for
their views. 

And yet, almost by definition, new scientific truths are a repudiation
of popular and generally accepted views, which makes scientific
originality inherently n act of scientific rebellion. 

It would seem to me that even in a revolution, the successful politician must skate on the crest of the incoming tide. 

On the contrary, the epoch making scientist, the revolutionary
scientific thinker, must swim against the powerful force of the
incoming tide. 

However, I may be moving ahead of myself and the case I seek to present to you. 

Let me therefore start where I should have begun in the first place. 

In your very challenging book, "Mokoko," you make the blowing very interesting observation, 

"For example, course curricula (in African Universities) were designed
to be extensions and at times replicas of the curricula in the colonial
power. The examples of the medical and engineering curricula in South
Africa and West Africa come to mind. Most South African doctors today
practise, or would find it easier to practice the medicine they were
taught at Medical School better in the UK than in South Africa’ for the
curriculum is based on and is a true replica of the British system of
health care. The textbooks, the journals and the role models are almost
exclusively British-American. Even diseases for which we have enormous
advantages, prevalence and experiences, the South African doctor has to
wait for research or solutions about aetiology, modes of presentation
and treatment protocols to originate from Europe and America, where ten
or twenty patients will have been studied. By faithfully copying this
curriculum the British of course reward us with recognition; and this
in the simple-minded constitutes international standards and
recognition. The faithful reproduction of curricula appl(ies) to many
other fields of study. Having studied in both the UK and America I
realise how sensitive and suspicious the British or American scholars
are of knowledge outside their own experiences. For South Africa, there
were two logical reasons for this imitative approach: to maintain
international standards and recognition that we are acceptable to the
colonial power and to facilitate the education and subsequent return of
the colonialists back to the motherland. The criterion of standards was
not qualitative, but socio-political and historical. English-speaking
colonies wanted recognition from Britain, French-speaking and
Portuguese-speaking wanted recognition from France and Portugal
respectively. At the same time when this recognition was taking place
in Africa, there were no reciprocal recognitions of standards between
either Britain, France or Portugal in terms of their education systems.
To the contrary, the British did not recognise French, Portuguese or
Spanish degrees and despised them." (Mokoko, p 174.) 

As you know, some of the questions that President Mbeki as asked with regard to HIV/AIDS are:

since HIV infection in 1985 affected essentially male homosexuals in
both South Africa and the United States, what has happened to change
the situation in South Africa, such that HIV transmission in the latter
has become heterosexual?

since HIV was said not to be endemic in this part of the world in 1985, when did it become endemic and why?

In general, why is the transmission of HIV in the developed western
world largely restricted to gay men and intravenous drug users while in
Africa it affects almost completely ordinary heterosexuals with
virtually no incidence of drug abuse? and,

what substance is there to the argument about the dangerous toxicity of
such anti-retroviral drugs as AZT and what is the implication of this? 

Again as you [are] aware, President Mbeki has been in contact with some
of the so-called AIDS dissidents’, such as Dr David Rasnick. 

Seine of these dissidents’ serve with you and other orthodox AIDS scientists’ on our President’s Scientific AIDS Panel.

The combination of these two factors – the President’s inquiry end his
contact with the dissidents’ – has produced various responses, many of
them distinctly unpleasant. 

One of these, as you know, is the charge that the President is lagging
behind the development of scientific knowledge by at least 15 years. 

What is said is that the questions the President is raising were answered by western scientists at least 15 years ago. 

It is also said that the dissidents’ the President speaks to lost the
scientific argument to other western scientists at least 15 years ago. 

After this seemingly powerful argument, it is assumed and intended that
our President should then admit the error of his ways with regard to
the matter of HIV/AIDS and shut up! 

All that is said is that Western science long made a ruling! 

The question is then asked – what right does a non-scientist have, such
as our President, to question matters that science in Britain, France,
Portugal and the United States answered many years ago! 

The real question however that those who oppose President Mbeki are
asking is, what right does any African have to question the findings of
western science, regardless of whether he or she is a scientist or not! 

Indeed, a petition has been signed allegedly by many scientists, part
of whose argument is precisely this – that President Mbeki is wrong to
ask questions when western science has already answered such questions. 

I understand that you were one of the signatories of this petition,
which was prepared in the context of the Durban International AIDS
Conference. 

Everything I know limited and inconsequential as it may be, tells me
that you were right when you warned, in Mokoko’, against our slavish
subservience to western science! 

It is said that the heterosexual transmission of HIV is, in particular, a specifically African phenomenon. 

Accordingly, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for at least two-thirds of the global incidence of HIV/AID, it is said. 

These circumstances suggest to me that, as you write in Mokoko’, with
regard to "diseases for which we have enormous advantages, prevalence
and experiences, the South African doctor (should not) wait for
research or solutions about aetiology, modes of presentation and
treatment protocols to originate from Europe and America, where ten or
twenty patients will have been studied." 

Your current position seems to be a repudiation of the intellectual
honesty inherent in the paragraph I have just cited. I sincerely hope I
am wrong in my observations, in case I am not, I request you to assist
me and others like me to understand the sudden change. We would be
greatly indebted to you for such enlightenment. 

This is important given the pride we held you in as you waged a
seemingly principled struggle at the University of the Witwatersrand.
In those days many of us saw the author of Mokoko living out our ideals
as African people. That is why many of us held you up as a hero, and
perhaps that is why we bother at all to engage you on the issues that
seem to puzzle us. 

My contention is that the President is being vilified merely for asking
questions. You seem to be part of those who are calling for his head
unless he repents and proffer an apology to western science The irony
is that none of those occupying the self appropriated high moral ground
have yet produced any evidence to suggest that the President is wrong.
They are all refusing or are unable to provide scientific answers to
the questions that President Mbeki has posed. 

In the book Mokoko’ you write: 

"The mention of the word Africanisation sends shocks and shivers into
the various establishment structures. The word Africanisation has
become negatively politicised Politically, it conjures up a déjà vu
phenomenon of dictatorships, military coups, the expulsions, exodus of
Europeans, Asians and unstable governments; economically, it represents
poverty, famines and a mess; in development terms, it reminds one of
the total lack of it; in education it brings into focus the lowering of
standards, campus thrashing, kidnappings, poor academic scholarship; in
health it brings memories of mutilation of bodies, witchcraft and AIDS
somewhere in the continent. (My emphasis.) Europeans have found this
word, its interpretation and what it embodies uncomfortable. They have
decided on its meaning and interpretation from their perspective i.e.
provided a Eurocentric meaning and promoted this throughout the world.
(p206) 

I could not agree more! 

In this context, I would like to remind you of the story of the forced
removals of Africans from District Six in Cape Town during the Year
1901. 

Of District Six, Vivian Bickford-Smith has written: 

Its population was drawn from all over the world. By 1900 the largest
component was formed by people whom the Cape Government referred to
variously as "Malay", "Mixed and Other" or "Coloured"… The District
also had large numbers of recent immigrants from Britain, several
thousand Jews from Tsarist Russia and several more thousand Mfengu,
Gcaleka and Gaika from the Eastern Cape… 

A vast range of nationalities were represented in the District,
including considerable numbers of Indians, Chinese and Australians." 

(Historical Society of Cape Town: CABO 1985, Vol 3, No 4.) 

Out of this population drawn from all over the world, the colonial
government picked on at least 6000 Africans and forcibly removed the to
a place called Uitvlugt, with the township later named Ndabeni. 

This was to be followed in 1902 with the passage of the Native Reserve
Locations Act which prescribed that Africans resident in Cape Town had
to live in their own segregated locations. 

Those who do not know would be pardoned if they thought all this had to
do with an early expression of the apartheid policies implemented after
1948, which resulted in the ultimate destruction of District Six during
the 1950’s. 

However, the reason for this early forced removal was the fact that in
1901, Cape Town was affected by a serious outbreak of the dreaded
bubonic plague! 

Here are some excerpts from a letter signed by one H.S., which appeared in the Cape Times of April 3, 1901. 

"Sir, – Don’t you think the time has arrived when we should take a leaf
out of the book the Boers, who, in spite of all their faults, know how
to manage the nigger, viz., to prevent them having the monopoly of the
pavements and hustling ladies and gentlemen, who, naturally afraid of
coming into contact with them during these plague times, prefer giving
them a wide berth, leaving the pavement for the street and master
nigger monarch of all he surveys? Surely the police, who often direct
their energies into the wrong channel, and leave undone what they ought
to do, may be ordered to keep undesirables off the pavement, and by
doing so arrest the spread of plague from contact…How on earth, even
if you keep yourself as clean as possible, can one avoid infection if
such things are permitted, (mixing all races in public transport),
seeing also that the Dock busses and cabs proceeding townwards from the
Docks are crowded with the dirtiest Kafirs in creation? Is this a
civilised country or are we living amongst a lot of barbarians? – I am,
etc." 

You may think that this Letter to the Editor’ represented the views of the white lunatic fringe.’ 

In her 1989 doctoral thesis, Public health and Society in Cape Town:

1880-1910′ Elizabeth van Heyningen reports: 

"At a special meeting of the Sanitary and Health Committee of the Cape
Town City Council (in 1900), Mr Owen Lewis urged that the kafir’
population was a source of great danger. Should the plague break out,
he predicted, it would probably be in the quarters in which they lived.
The Chief Sanitary Inspector, Corben, objected, arguing that there were
fewer cases of infectious disease amongst Africans in Cape Town than
whites in proportion to their numbers." 

She also reports that an eminent British scholar of his day, Professor
Simpson, considered African culture to be totally inimical to city
life. The learned professor said: 

"The natives coming direct from their kraals in the native territories
to work in Cape Town, being unused to town life, are unable to adapt
themselves to their new conditions and crowd together when permitted,
to extraordinary degrees." 

In other words, they could not but generate filth and breed disease! 

A conference of all the white governments in South Africa was held in
Pretoria in 1899 to agree on a co-ordinated response to any outbreak of
the plague. 

Clause 15 of the agreement reached at the conference stated: 

"That as far as possible steps be taken for preventing vagrancy and the
unrestrained movements of natives within or from any infected place." 

The actual situation however is that the racial breakdown of the plague case in the Cape Peninsula in 1901 was: 

Coloured: 380

White : 207

African: 157 

And yet the reality is that it was the Africans who were forcibly removed. 

The reason for this is perfectly clear – racism! 

White South Africa, supported by a British Professor, knew it as a
matter of fact that to be African meant that you were obvously and
naturally a carrier or the plague! 

The April 4, 1901 issue of "Imvo Zabantsundu" carried an article
discussing steps that had been taken after a small outbreak of the
plague in the King Williamstown area towards the end of 1900. 

The correspondent wrote: 

"Plague restrictions came into operation in King Williamstown last
week. It is a matter of great regret that regulations for the public
safety cannot nowadays be carried out without creating a sense of
grievance among the Natives. The present writer was, we believe, the
first to be turned away from the train under a regulationthat no
aboriginal Native or Asiatic should be allowed to travel by rail
without a certificate of inoculation and a pass from the Plague Doctor.
It will thus be seen that from this the white people are exempted. We
have thus yet another illustration of the working of the formula of
Equal rights for all civilised men south of the Zambezi.’ Of course
the poor Natives are quite puzzled why it is that rom them a
certificate of inoculation should be exacted even when proceeding to a
place three miles out of town, while the wearers of another colour
should go scot free…Our people are the more perplexed since the
plague is not endemic to this Country. It comes from abroad with
ships…The Natives we believe have no objection to be treated as other
people, but they demur to be dealt with differently, and that without
rhyme or reason."  

As Corben, the Cape Town sanitary inspector knew in 1901, we also know
that there was no organic relationship whatsoever between the fact of
our being African and the outbreak of the bubonic plague. 

Yet, despite the brave voices of Corben and others, the disease of
racism dictated that white South Africa expel the Africans from central
Cape Town, in much the same way as rats were exterminated in central
Cape Town to wipe out the plague. 

Being an educated person, you will, of course, know that a worse fate
befell the Jews when the Black Death (the bubonic plague) hit Europe in
the 14th century. Dr E.L. Skip Knox of Bolse State University has
written: 

"As ever in Europe, when a crisis arose, the Jews were easy targets of
blame. They were not the only group accused of poisoning water or
practising witchcraft and hence bringing on the plague, but they
suffered the anger of mob violence over a wide area. There were
massacres, especially in the cities along the Rhine River… On one day
in Strasbourg in 1349, nearly 200 Jews were burned to death by an angry
mob." (The Black Death.) 

Those who carried out theseatrocities were, undoubtedly, most certain
about the correctness of their diagnosis that the Jews were the cause
of the Black Death. The fact of the matter, however, is that this
represented nothing but pure racism, unadulterated anti-Semitism. 

I am pretty certain that if, at that time, there had been significant
numbers of Africans in Europe, as there are now, their fate would have
been no different from that of the Jews and the Gypsies. 

Those who attributed the spread of the bubonic plague in Cape Town and
elsewhere in the country in 1901 to the Africans, were similarly very
certain about the correctness of their diagnosis. 

Once again, the fact of the matter was that this represented nothing
but pure racism, a continuation of the process of the dehumanisation of
the African people. 

And so I return to the issue of HIV/AIDS. 

You will of course understand that the poor Native’ writer of this
letter is also quite puzzled as to why, once again, we the Natives are
accused of being the biggest global threat to human life, accounting
for fully two-thirds of the global incidence of HIV! 

With regard to the plague, we were charged with being naturally filthy,
natural providers of the suitable habitat for carrier vermin, dangerous
agents for the propagation of a killer disease. 

As far as I understand it, nobody has charged that HIV thrives in
circumstances and because of squalor and unhygienic conditions. 

I suppose that this time around we should be grateful that we are not
being accused of being naturally filthy and therefore a natural habitat
for HIV. 

A Kenyan doctor, Dr G.S.N. Wanene has made a point that seems logical to me, a non-scientist. He says: 

"There is no compelling scientific reason to make us assume that there
are fundamental differences in the performance of heterosexual acts in
the West and in developing countries. Heterosexual activity in the West
and in Africa is still the same heterosexual activity, and ONLY THE
COLOUR OF THE INSTRUMENTS IS DIFFERENT. Sub-Saharan Africa has 10% of
the World’s population. It therefore has 10% of the World’s population.
It therefore has 10% of the world’s heterosexual activity. It should
have roughly 10% of the world’s heterosexually spread HIV. Africa has
more than 70% of the world’s HIV problem. It appears somebody has given
Africa the other 60% and wants the Africans and the rest of the
world…to blame that EXTRA 60% of Sub-Saharan HIV/AIDS on EXTRA
heterosexual spread in Africa." (Wanene’s emphases). (HIV/AIDS: The
Outside Story)." 

Of course, these comments relate to the question that President Mbeki posed to the Scientific Panel on which you serve. 

How are we to explain all this – that African heterosexual activity is
highly toxic, whereas Western heterosexual activity is perfectly benign! 

Or is it that as Africans we are so heterosexually hyperactive that we account for 70% of the world’s heterosexual activity!

All this is puzzling to poor Natives’ such as the President and I. 

Dr Wanene quotes one Negley Farson as having written in "Last Chance in Africa", Seventh Impression, January 1953, p.34: 

"Any idea that he (the African) should cut down on his birth rate – us
contraceptives for instance – just strikes him as ludicrous…
Fornication, the black man seems convinced, I about the only pleasure
left to him." 

Dr Wanene also quotes our own Field Marshall Smuts has having said: 

"The African is the only happy human…no other race is so easily
satisfied, so good tempered, so carefree… The African easily forgets
past troubles, and does not anticipate future troubles. This
happy-go-luck disposition is a great asset, but it also has its draw
backs. There is no inward incentive to improvement, there is no
persistent effort in construction, and there is complete absorption in
the present, its joys and sorrows." 

You will of course be familiar with the book, "AIDS, Africa And Racism"
written by Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta. They too provide some very
interesting quotations. 

They write that various arguments were used to justify slavery. 

"Black people were disease ridden, dirty in their habits, uncontrolled
in their sexual behaviour, and incapable of higher human values such as
honesty or sexual morality," they write. (My emphases.) 

"Such views were succinctly expressed by an apologist for racism,
Winfred Collins, in a book published in 1918 entitled The Truth About
Lynching and the Negro in the South (In Which the Author Pleads that
the South Be Made Safe for the White Race)": 

Collins writes: "Two of the Negro’s most prominent characteristics are
the utter lack of chastity and complete ignorance of veracity. The
Negro’s sexual laxity, considered so immoral or even criminal in the
white man’s civilisation, may have been all but a virtue in the habitat
of his origin. There, nature developed in him intense sexual passions
to offset his high death rate." (My emphases" 

The Chirimuuta’s also quote a November 1988 edition of the British
magazine, The Spectator, as saying, when it addressed the issue of the
spread of AIDS among the British heterosexual population: 

"But there is another endangered group. To alert or protect them will
require still more unfashionable candour than to address the
homosexuals. That group is the West Indians. Their men sire their
children, and often move on to another partner. Stable families are
rarer than among whites, let alone Indians. To talk to West Indians
about Aids will require more plain speaking – and risk more cries of
racism’ – than has been dreamt of in Lord Whitelaw’s philosophy. It
will be a brave government that will do it in time. But it will
probably have to be done in the end." 

As you say in "Mokoko", "in health (the word Africanisation) brings
memories of mutilation of bodies, withcraft and AIDS somewhere in the
continent." 

In his book, "The Rise of Christian Europe", the eminent British historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper (later Lord Dacre) says:

"Undergraduates, seduced, as always, by the changing breath of
journalistic fashion, demand that they should be taught then history of
black Africa. Perhaps, in the future, the will be some African history
to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only
the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness,
like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America. And darkness
is not a subject for history… (We may) amuse ourselves with the
unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant
corners of the globe… It is European techniques, European examples,
European ideas which have shaken the non-European world out of its past
– out of barbarism in Africa…and the history of the world, for the
last five centuries, in so far as it has significance, has been
European history." 

Out of Africa, no techniques, no ideas, only darkness and unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes! 

Undoubtedly, the learned British historian included among these the
heterosexual gyrations of the barbarous black tribes, which activity
made them especially prone to HIV infection! 

The Chirimuuta’s also document the intense effort made by western
scientists to provide racist, insulting and anti-African "scientific
proof" that HIV originates fro Africa and spread from there to the
United States and elsewhere. 

For instance, the quote a paper published by The Lancet in April 1983.
The paper, written by I.C. Bygbjerg, entitled "AIDS in a Danish Surgeon
(Zaire, 1976)" says: 

"Little attention has been paid to the hyperendemic focus of KS
(Kaposi’s Sarcoma) in central Africa…is there a connection between
African and American AIDS/KS; is the underlying cause another deadly,
but slow-acting, African virus introduced to America, perhaps via
Haiti…?" 

Among the many instances they cite they also quote from an article
published in the British American Journal on April 27, 1985, "AIDS: the
African Connection", written by P. Jenkins et al, which says: 

"Further it has been suggested that the agent causing AIDS, currently
believed to be HTLV-III, may exist in a stable equilibrium in an
African environment but alters its expression in a new population." 

In 1983, the Bureau of Epidemiology in Paris stated: 

"We suggest that Equatorial Africa is an endemic zone for the supposed infectious agent(s) of this (AIDS) illness." 

Not to be outdone, the Swedes L. Morfeldt-Manson and L. Lindquist had
their article, "Blood brotherhood: a risk factor for AIDS?" published
in The Lancet on December 8, 1984. In the article they write of a Scot
who, they say, died of AIDS in 1982. They say: 

"On reviewing the history of this patient (who had previously been
admitted in a Stockholm hospital), we found that he was interested in
anthropology and that he had taken part in ritual interchange of blood
with people belonging to remote tribes in East Africa ("blood
brotherhood"). He had a Tanzanian girlfriend when living in Tanzania." 

The article, "AIDS: an old disease from Africa?", written by Dr Kevin
de Cock, was published in the British Medical Journal in August 1984.
In this article he says: 

"It is suggested that the first Americans with AIDS acquired the
condition in the early 1970’s in Africa. AIDS is increasingly
recognised in Black Africans, and early African cases preceded the
first documented American cases by several years." 

One of the contributors to the criminally cruel and insulting mythology
about AIDS and Africa was none other than the Belgian Professor Piot,
currently head of UNAIDS. 

He and his colleagues spent 3 weeks studying 38 patients at the Mama
Yemo and Kinshasa hospitals in Zaire. Where else would the Belgian
scientists go in search of the origins of the plague except their
country’s former colony, the erstwhile Belgian Congo!

Their article, "Acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome in a heterosexual
population in Zaire," based on this study, appeared in The Lancet of
July 14, 1984. 

To their credit, having noted that a number of the patients suffered
from various infectious diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis,
the authors make the admission that: 

"Tuberculosis, protein calorie malnutrition, and various parasitic
diseases can all be associated with depression or cellular immunity." 

The Chirimuuta’s make the seemingly correct observation that "unless
such diseases are carefully excluded, depressed cellular immunity could
not support a diagnosis of AIDS." 

Yet despite all this, Professor Piot and his friends make the following finding: 

"Using as the numerator the number of cases of AIDS seen during the
three weeks of this investigation and which came from Kinshasa and as a
denominator the population of Kinshasa (about 3 million) we estimate
(my emphasis) the annual rate to be about 17 per 100,000. If children
were excluded from the denominator the rate would even be higher. This
is a minimal estimate, and it is comparable with or higher than the
rate in San Francisco or New York." 

To which the Chirimuuta’s comment: 

"On the basis of a three week study, with limited diagnostic
facilities, an unsound scientific method and a sample of less than 30
patients, Kinshasa’s AIDS problem is worse than San Francisco’s!" 

As you know, sixteen years after the publication of this article in The
Lancet, characterised among other things by unsound scientific
method’, Professor Piot, is now firmly settled in his seat as Chief of
UNAIDS. 

An international civil servant employed, among other members of the UN,
by African states, he continues as to the manner born, to make all
sorts of estimates about the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Africa, including
the former Belgian colony now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The figures which puzzle Dr Wanene as they puzzle this poor Native’
come from none other than Professor Piot who started his career as a
European sangoma in Africa more than a decade-and-a-half ago. 

Let me, for the last time, mention yet another of the articles cited by
the Chirimuuta’s. This one was, again, published in The Lancet on May
31, 1986. 

Written by A.J. Nahmias et al, it is entitled, "Evidence for human
infection with an HTLV III/LAV-like virus in Central Africa, 1959."
Inter alia it says: 

"The place of origin of HTLV-III is controversial but most workers have
suggested Africa. Most cogent to the issue has been the isolation of a
related virus from the African green monkey, the high incidence of AIDS
in many central African countries, and serological evidence for a high
prevalence of infection. Because of the importance of this issue we
decided to test 1213 (frozen) plasmas, obtained…from various parts of
Africa…We have demonstrated that at least one individual from central
Africa had been exposed to a virus similar to human HTLV-III more than
a quarter of a century ago." 

The Chirimuuta’s comment: 

"Firstly the authors stated that the tests on plasma frozen for many
years can give false positive results, secondly only one of 1213
specimens was positive, and thirdly the authors are not even convinced
that the individual had actually been exposed to HTLV-III. Yet this
much quoted paper proved that AIDS originated in Zaire!"  

With regard to the issue of the African green monkey, I would also like
to refer you something written by Baron Cuvier, who has been described
as "the great naturalist of the early part of the (19th) century." 

"This is what he wrote: 

"The Negro race…is marked by black complexion, crisped or woolly
hair, compressed cranium and a flat nose. The projection of the lower
part of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate it to the
monkey tribe: the hordes of which it consists have always remained in
the most complete state of barbarism." (Quoted in: Black Athena, by
Martin Bernal.) 

It is not difficult to see how those brought up on these prejudices
would find it quite easy to trace the passage of a virus from the
African green monkey, to the barbaric African who is close to the
monkey tribe’ and thence to the civilised Westerner, as western science
did indeed try to do with regard to HIV. 

Naturally, in the face of a new, puzzling, hitherto unknown and
terrifying killer plague, where else but in Africa would western
science find the cause for the plague, a continent that is so much the
home of everything bad and evil which the West claims it could never be! 

The western observations we have cited tell me that essentially two
factors have made sub-Saharan Africa the epicentre of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic that Professor Piot alleges it is. These are:

The western conviction that as Africans including our fauna such as
green monkeys, we are inherently and intrinsically diseased: and,

The western conviction that we are inherently and intrinsically
addicted to hyperactive heterosexual intercourse, compelled by the
instinctive African drive for immediate physical gratification. 

As Professor Piot and his fellow Belgians did in the article we have
quoted, I accept that sub-Saharan Africa is exposed to many things that
will result in the immune deficiency of many among us. 

But clearly, I cannot and will never accept the virulently racist and
anti-African Western propositions reflected under the bullet points’
above. 

Everything I have seen and heard suggests to me that it was for the same reason that President Mbeki posed the questions he did. 

Like him, I am interested not in the propagation of racist ideas and
insults but in scientific information that will help us to deal with
the AIDS challenge in our country and continent. 

I find it deeply perplexing that you, of all people, should have found
it necessary to engage the President in hostile polemic rather than
respond to his request. 

I am perplexed hat an eminent African scientist such as yourself, who
fought at Wits University to defend the integrity of African
scholarship, should have become such a determined defender of what
seems to me to be a grievously dehumanising projection of ourselves as
Africans, including yourself. 

I was taken by surprise when you took a position contrary to other
African scientists such as Dr Wanene and the Chirimuuta’s, siple on the
basis that western science had spoken. 

As you know, there are many other African scientists who have made and
are making a significant effort to unravel AIDS as it manifests itself
in Africa, even if this has meant going against established western
orthodoxy. 

By African I do not mean black, but include, as all of us should, white African scientists. 

I have in my possession a set of statistics dealing with: "Health
statistics in African countries with high (H) and low (L) incidence of
AIDS in 1992 and (year ending April) 2000." 

Based on figures derived from sentinel surveillance carried out by the
WHO, the document is compiled by Barrie Craven PhD, Reader in
Economics, Newcastle Business School, University of Northumbria,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK and Gordon Stewart, M.D., Emeritus Professor of
Public Health at the University of Glasgow. 

These statistics show that in the year 2000, the mean incidence/100,000 of AIDS stood thus in: 

High: 313

Low: 38

South Africa: 30 

Thus South Africa falls significantly below the average for the African countries with the lowest incidence of AIDS. 

Of course, Professor Piot tells a radically different story, which I
see you are very read to broadcast, seemingly with the greatest
enthusiasm. 

I notice also that for your efforts, you earn the fervent applause of
precisely the same people who were against your election as the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, who, as you
report in Mokoko’, resorted to the most unprincipled ways and means. 

Those against whom you now speak with such determination are the same
people who fought in many principled ways to have you elected to this
position. 

You might wish to remember what has been said in the context of
warfare, that when the enemy garlands you and sing your praises, it is
not because you are inflicting casualties on his or her battalions but
because you are concentrating your fire on your own regiments. 

But perhaps all of us misunderstood you when you wrote in Mokoko’ that: 

"The nature of the our reconciliation problem revolves around dealing
with the superficial, but totally ignoring the fundamental
socio-biological factors that have shaped this society over three and a
half centuries. This is the nature of South African reconciliation. It
will not provide long lasting solutions to the deep prolonged racial
wounds and scars that stretch over generations, almost inherited
racially in a Mendelian fashion. There can be no reconciliation by
attempting to forget the past. The truth of this past must first be
acknowledged. Once this has happened it will provide the foundations of
reconciliation…It’s the support of the ordinary man that kept and
carried me through. Even to this day, long after the event. I can walk
tall amongst my people with pride. Many often come and shake my hand,
some in disbelief but many, for a job well done." 

Among the socio-biological factors that have shaped our society over
three and a half centuries are the western scientists who helped to
create the psychological dependence that obliged Africans to depend on
these western scientists for solutions to problems they were otherwise
uniquely positioned to solve. 

These are the people who created the Eurocentric African university’
which you sought to overthrow and replace with a truly African
University. 

It is they who created a "scientific" view of the African that made us
the very essence of everything despicable in human society and
behaviour. 

I hope that you will continue to walk tall among your people, with
pride, and that they will continue to shake your hand, despite your
seeming readiness to embrace and propagate this "science." 

Whether this hope is fulfilled depends entirely on you and what you say and do.

 

As the successors to those who removed the Africans from District Six
in 1901 and imposed restrictions on the movements of Africans in King
Williamstown in the same year learnt perhaps belatedly, the poor
Natives’ can both think and act in their own interest. 

Even Lord Dacre can no longer sustain the notion that as Africans all
that we represent is darkness, which is not a subject for history. 

I must suppose that no self-respecting scientist will stand up today to
claim that Africa is the home of original sin, in much the same way
that it has become difficult to find anybody in our country who
supported the system of apartheid. 

The changed circumstances oblige the racists to reposition themselves
and refashion their weapons. Nevertheless they remain racists. 

We all wish that you will feature in the history our own historians
will write, as the bold and honest African scientist and intellectual
we read of in Mokoko’! 

Yours sincerely, 

[Unsigned] 

Ngoako Ramatlhodi

by Politicsweb.co.za

Post published in: Uncategorized