The Scorpions, whom are modeled on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations, have been focusing on a large travel-related scandal in which Members of Parliament are accused inflating their travel expenses to scam upwards of $2 million.

Rather than getting to the bottom of that scandal, however, the ANC has predictably chosen to attack the investigators.

ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe, for example, accused the anti-corruption unit of timing its announcements to harm the ANC, noting that The Scorpions had released a press release about the extent of the travel scandal on the same day that Thabo Mbeki delivered his State of the Nation address,

I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think it’s a planned, desperate kind of act of vengeance to really undermine parliament and create this impression that members of parliaments are by definition cowboys and crooks.

The ANC has even taken to accusing members of the anti-corruption unit of having been spies for the apartheid-era government.

Mbeki himself promised a thorough investigation, not of corruption but of the anti-corruption task force, in February.

Of course the winds were taken out of the whole “we’re being persecuted” claim when five ANC Members of Parliament plead guilty to fraudulent billing of their travel expenses. Presumably, they were framed or were apartheid spies working with The Scorpions all along to discredit the ANC.

Sources:

Mbeki to probe elite crime unit. The BBC, February 14, 2005.

ANC’s anger over cowboy ‘smears’. The BBC, February 4, 2005.

ANC to act against convicted MPs. iAfrica.Com, March 18, 2005.

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The survey polled more than 50,000 people in 64 countries people between June and September 2004.

The rate of bribery was, not surprisingly, much higher in developing countries. For example, in Cameroon more than 50 percent of respondents said they or a member of their household had paid a bribe.

In Nigeria, Kenya, Lithuania and Moldova, 1 in 3 respondents said they or a household member had paid a bribe.

There was some good news, such as surprisingly low levels of bribe paying in South Africa, as well as a surprising level of corruption in Greece where 11 percent of those polled admitted they or a household member had paid a bribe.

Transparency International board member Akere Muna, who heads up the organization’s Cameroon branch, said in a press release,

It is time to use international co-operation to enforce a policy of zero tolerance of political corruption, and to put an end to practices whereby politicians put themselves above the law — stealing from ordinary citizens and hiding behind parliamentary immunity.

Political parties and politicians they nominate for election are entrusted with great power and great hopes by the people who vote for them. Political leaders must not abuse that trust by serving corrupt or selfish interests once they are in power.

According to the BBC, the World Bank estimates that as more than $1 trillion is paid out annually worldwide in bribes.

Source:

One in 10 families ‘pays bribes’. The BBC, December 9, 2004.

Political parties are most corrupt institution worldwide according to TI Global Corruption Barometer 2004. Press Release, Transparency International, December 9, 2004.

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In its 2004 update to its Condoms Count report, Population Action International estimated that the developing world needed 10 billion condoms in 2002, but aid agencies supplied only about 2.5 billion condoms.

It notes that in South Africa between 1998-2002, the number of donated condoms amounted to only 2.6 condoms per man per year (in contrast, more than 60 condoms are produced each year in the United States for each man).

PAI and others blame the United States in part for the Bush administration’s emphasis on abstinence as a solution to the AIDS crisis.

Source:

World falling short on condom provision. NewScientist.Com, July 12, 2004.

Counting Condoms: Donors Coming Up Short. Press Release, Population Action International, July 14, 2004.

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But a survey of African patients in Botswana, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda found that, in fact, HIV patients in those countries were more likely to stick to their regimen of AIDS drugs than were Americans.

On average, the survey reported that AIDS patients in those four countries take about 90 percent of the prescribed drugs. That ranks favorably with American AIDS patients who, in similar surveys, reported taking about 70 percent of their anti-HIV drugs.

Interestingly, there is also evidence that African patients are more truthful in reporting their compliance with the anti-HIV regimen than American patients. According to the New York Times’ report of the survey results,

Moreover, doctors say, most African patients are zealous about their regimens. They are also more truthful when estimating their adherence, said Dr. David Bangsberg, a professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco who has studied compliance patterns here and abroad.

On average, he said, American patients tell their doctors that they are doing 20 percentage points better than they really are — that is, a patient who says he takes 90 percent of his pills will, when tested with unannounced home pill counts or electronic pill-bottle caps, turn out to be taking 70 percent.

A study of 29 Ugandan patients found that, on average, they estimated that they were taking 93 percent of pills and proved to be taking 91 percent.

There are a number of possible reason for the difference, including that in African nations a number of people in the AIDS patient’s extended family may be contributing to help pay for the relatively expensive drugs, and that AIDS patients in Africa have a more immediate experience with numerous fatalities from the disease given the relatively high death rate from AIDS in Africa compared to the United States.

Sources:

Africans Outdo Americans in Following AIDS Therapy. Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, September 3, 2003.

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Currently less than 30,000 South Africans take anti-retroviral drugs, though the government’s own report suggested that close to 500,000 could benefit from the availability of the drugs.

South African AIDS activist Zakie Achmat preferred to take a cautious approach to the announcement, telling the BBC,

We will wait to see the actual operational plan before celebration. But for all of us living with HIV in South Africa, and our families, this is the first sign of hope.

This is quite a turnaround from the same government whose Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has recently taken to suggesting that rather than anti-retrovirals, what AIDS patients in South Africa need to do to boost their immune systems is consume large quantities the African sweet potato, hypoxis. The few studies of large scale consumption of hypoxis, however, suggest that if it had any effect at all it would likely be a deleterious one for people suffering from HIV.

Sources:

SA activists hail AIDS drug U-turn. The BBC, August 9, 2003.

S. Africa to distribute AIDS drugs. CNN, August 8, 2003.

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The census report painted a very odd economic picture for South Africa. On the one hand, the report claimed that many key measures of economic progress had improved dramatically since 1996. For example, the census claimed that 70 percent of South African homes had electricity in 2001 compared to only 58 percent in 1996. Similarly, South Africans had better access to education, clean water and other goods.

On the other hand, the census reported that South Africa’s employment rate sits at a whopping 42 percent. The government tried to explain part of that away by explaining that people in agriculture and those working outside the formal economy might have marked themselves as unemployed. Of course if South Africa’s informal economy is that big that’s a major problem in and of itself.

Source:

S. Africa grows despite AIDS. The BBC, July 9, 2003.

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Although the report was completed in March, the South African government claimed that it was simply a first draft and that it is doing all it can to treat AIDS patients.

In the past, South African government officials have trotted out every excuse from the expense of the drugs to claims that they need to be tested more thoroughly before they could be used in South Africa.

Meanwhile, in a visit to Africa U.S. president George W. Bush promised $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa which put pressure on European nations to contribute billions as well.

Speaking before the International Aids Society conference, Nelson Mandela said that Bush had “moved the debate from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of billions of dollars.”

Sources:

SA Aids deaths report leaked. The BBC, July 14, 2003.

Can Africa handle AIDS drugs? Patrick Jackson, The BBC, July 15, 2003.

Recipe for Disaster. The Star (South Africa), July 17, 2003.

Mandela assails global injustice of AIDS crisis. Sarah Boseley and Rory Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald, July 15, 2003.

AIDS In Africa is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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. . . conditions in Africa were different from those in the developed world, where the drugs have proven beneficial.

Mandela does say that the government should provide the drugs to patients with the warning that they are awaiting further safety tests, but how can Mandela seriously call on South Africa to “smash to the superstition” about AIDS while endorsing this part of Mbeki’s pseudoscientific view of AIDS and AIDS drugs.

Source:

Mandela backs studies into safety of AIDS drugs. Reuters, December 1, 2002.

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The drug is nevirapine, and studies show that a single dose taken by women during labor can reduce by up to 50 percent the risk of women passing on AIDS to their newborns. The drug is used throughout the world for this purpose, but South Africa has decided that the drug may be too toxic.

A court earlier this summer ordered South Africa’s government to begin providing nevirapine to pregnant women, but now South Africa’s drug approval agency has said it wants to revisit the issue of whether or not the drug is toxic. The agency cites an FDA study in Uganda, but the FDA concern in that study was over whether or not the researchers carrying out the study had sufficiently documented their findings.

The New York Times noted that, “the council’s deliberations revived serious questions about South Africa’s handling of the AIDS epidemic.” To put it more bluntly, is South Africa seriously interested in stopping its AIDS epidemic? Instead of doing so, it seems focused on making the AIDS crisis the focus of some sort of bizarre internal political exercise. South African president Thabo Mbeki seems intent on allowing infants to contract AIDS simply so that he can assert his country’s independence from the medical consensus on HIV.

Source:

South Africa may bar AIDS drug in childbirth. Rachel L. Swarns, The New York Times, August 5, 2002.

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And Thabo Mbeki had the balls to show up in Canada last month begging the West for more development aid saying,

The common thread here is the renewed determination among political leaders and civil society to build a humane world of shared prosperity.

Yeah, unless you happen to be an HIV positive pregnant woman.

In fact, in Mbeki’s vision of South Africa, many AIDS deaths don’t happen. Mbeki worked hard, for example, to suppress a report that found AIDS was the leading cause of death in South Africa.

Politician, heal thyself.

Sources:

South Africa ‘must provide Aids drug’. The BBC, July 5, 2002.

Mbeki calls for Africa aid. The BBC, June 24, 2002.

Ministry attacks Mbeki Aids stance. Barnaby Phillips, The BBC, September 21, 2001.

What Is Wrong With Thabo Mbeki? is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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