DENYING THE DENIAL
Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad has written a vicious letter to the Star Newspaper, titled “Where’s the proof of denialism?” in response to columnist Patrick Laurence.
Laurence had written an article titled “Mbeki book deal questionable” in which he had questioned the appropriateness of the Minister in the Presidency facilitating a R1.6 million book deal for a biography that basically just praises the President. In doing, so Laurence argued that Ronald Suresh Roberts (the controversial author of the biography in question) had ignored Mbeki’s utterances on Zimbabwe and Aids in his blind defence of the presidency.
Unfortunately, both articles are subscription locked, and so it is not possible to link to them.
Pahad was clearly furious and he accused Laurence of “sloppy journalism” and “woefully inadequate research”, among other things.
Unfortunately for Pahad, however, the facts don’t justify his rage. Indeed, if anything, he would have done well to hold his tongue, especially on the issue of HIV/Aids.
(For a comprehensive response to Pahad’s claim that he organised the funding for the book in his personal capacity see here and here - and there is no need to deal with that element of Pahad response in this article.)
When it comes to the President and HIV/Aids, Pahad is on even shakier ground.
In his letter, he says the following about Laurence’s criticisms:
“…it is interesting that Laurence's article is singularly devoid of substance and ideas but long on personal attacks both on the president and myself. The one area where he does actually engage in a discussion of ideas is when he ventures onto the terrain of HIV and Aids. And here he trots out the old trope of the president being an Aids denialist without providing one shred of evidence.
“President Mbeki, as Ronald Suresh Roberts ably demonstrates, has never denied that HIV causes Aids. What he has said is that no substantive discussion about prevention can occur in the abstract outside of a broader discussion of poverty and underdevelopment.
“In advancing this particular articulation, the president was far from denying that HIV causes Aids. He was in fact seeking to introduce a serious, debate over a major scourge humanity faces; and challenging orthodoxy that sought refuge in the assertion by pharmaceutical companies that they had all the answers (of course, at a price).
“He was posing serious questions about the primacy of prevention and in so doing he was challenging the very hegemony of multinational pharmaceutical companies who have totally appropriated the discourse on HIV and Aids and subsumed it completely into the medical model. It was President Mbeki who worked tirelessly to bring down the costs of the relevant drugs; and he succeeded, even drawing grudging cheers from his Aids critics.
“Laurence certainly retreats into the fanciful when he argues that the establishment of the Aids Advisory Panel in 2000 is a "clear sign of Mbeki's dalliance with denialism". Surely it is not a mark of a denialist who wants answers because he understands that Africa faces a catastrophe which will lead to, in his own words "… the death of … millions and millions of people …"
“Laurence ought to know better than to peddle myths masquerading as fact, for when the president established the panel he said with absolute clarity and determination "… as Africans, we want to respond to HIV/Aids in a manner that is effective, a manner that does indeed address the fact of these millions of lives that are threatened".
“Where, Patrick Laurence, has the president actually denied the link between HIV and Aids? Where is the evidence of denialism? I
| Posted on 6/7/2007
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