Mbeki's hipocrisy

Mugabe is at it again. His newest atrocity: bulldozing the domiciles of thousands of people, leaving scores homeless and starving. His comrades in crime, the African Union (which includes Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa), have unsurprisingly failed to criticize Zimbabwe's infringement of human rights.

It is ironic that Thabo Mbeki's ANC, who are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their Freedom charter, are refusing to criticize the Zimbabwean situation. South Africa recently supported the African Union's claim, namely that the Zimbabwe situation is a matter of "internal legislation" which should not be interfered with. This attitude of the ANC seems to be very contradictory with their calls for international sanctions and interference in South African politics a few decades back, during the apartheid era.

South Africa's (more specifically: the ANC's) continuous refusal to criticize Robert Mugabe's reign of terror, prove that they are not the saintly knights of human rights they claim to be.

Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4620977.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4618341.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4111218.stm

48% increase in black suicides in SA since apartheid ended in 1994...

June 14 2005 - Sapa -- Black South Africans are so stressed about their present living conditions under the ANC-regime that they are taking their own lives in unprecedented numbers. This past decade has seen a 48% increase in suicides among black people as more South Africans than ever before.

http://allafrica.com/publishers.html?
passed_name=Sunday%20Times&
passed_location=Johannesburg

Nowhere is this more harshly evident than in Umtata, in the Eastern Cape - the capitol of Thabo Mbeki's own Xhosa tribe's homeland -- where an academic found a suicide rate at 30 per 100,000 people -- almost twice the World Health Organisation's estimated global average of 16 per 100 000."More and more people are committing suicide," said Professor Banwari Meel, who has published five papers on suicide in the Umtata region."Female suicide in particular is increasing. In the last five years it has increased at least threefold."

http://allafrica.com/publishers.html?
passed_name=Sunday%20Times&
passed_location=Johannesburg

Do the ANC benefit if AIDS-sufferers die sooner?

The South African government, more specifically, President Thabo Mbeki and Minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang, are notorious for their controversial and misguided statements concerning HIV/AIDS. The South African government (which is governed by a two-thirds ANC majority) has also been reluctant to supply anti-retrovirals to AIDS-patients. This 'apathy' of the SA government often baffles even the most resolute ANC-supporters.

To better conceive the motivation behind the ANC's dubious behaviour, one must bare in mind that South Africa has the highest AIDS-infection rate in the world. Here is a summary of South Africa's current(2003) AIDS status, as provided by UNAIDS:

• Adults between the ages of 15 and 59 have a prevalence rate of 21.5%
• There are 5100 000 adults between the ages of 15 and 59 living with HIV

Thus, out of a population of roughly 40 Million people, about 5 Million will die due to AIDS within the next ten to twelve years. During that period, the number of people infected with AIDS will increase considerably. Thus it can be said, bearing in mind the damning statistics, that South Africa's AIDS-status is beyond critical.

The ANC draw most of their support from the country's black population (blacks make up 70% of the country's population), which means that the ANC might quite possibly sustain a substantial blow to their support-base due to AIDS-related deaths.

It can also be said that the longer an AIDS-sufferer lives, the bigger the chances are that such a person might infect another.

There is no doubt that the ANC is doing everything they can to stop the spread of the disease. This can be seen by their arduous awareness-campaigns. However, the government's reluctance to provide anti-retroviral drugs to AIDS-sufferers, and recent reckless comments on HIV/AIDS by both the minister of health, Manto Tshabalala Msimang and the state president, Thabo Mbeki, shows a tendency of reckless behaviour towards those that are already infected with HIV.

What are the chances that they are intentionally trying to shorten the lifespan of AIDS-sufferers, and thereby the likelyhood of them spreading the disease?

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Is this the start of a Zimbabwean civil war?

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