Mbeki's legacy and why you should vote opposition

A study from the Harvard School of Public Health published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has asserted that more than 330,000 lives were lost to HIV/AIDS in South Africa from 2000 to 2005. During the same period, a staggering 35,000 babies were born with HIV because a mother-to-child prevention program using Nevirapine was not implemented. (Via HealthNewsTrack)

The authors estimated the benefits that South Africa lost by “restricting or delaying the use of ARV treatment in South Africa”. The study compared South Africa’s situation with neighbouring Botswana and Namibia.

From late 2000 Boehringer Ingelheim offered Nevirapine free of charge for five years for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 in developing economies. South Africa restricted the use of Nevaripine whilst Botswana and Namibia took full advantage. By 2005 South Africa had achieved less than 30% prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Botswana and Namibia in comparison had achieved up to 70% prevention.

Mbeki’s drumming of racial nationalism prevented South African from getting serious about AIDS. I am reminded of a particularly grim moment in parliament when the DA’s Ryan Coetzee asked the former president if the high incidence of rape in South Africa is partly responsible for the dramatic prevalence of AIDS. Mbeki, still seething from an article in the press suggesting that tradition and religion play a role in South Africa’s high rape rates, retorted:

"Whatever the circumstances, and regardless of the regularity of catholic incantations about 'playing the race card', I, for my part, will not keep quiet while others whose minds have been corrupted by the disease of racism, accuse us, the black people of South Africa, Africa and the world, as being, by virtue of our Africanness and skin colour, lazy, liars, foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral, sexually depraved, animalistic, savage and rapist," ... This year, in an article entitled "The Continuing Miseducation of the Negro", an African American Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, Dr Edward Rhymes, wrote, "We are portrayed as oversexed or lascivious, and yet the porn and adult entertainment industry is dominated by whites.It is African Americans that get accused of being rampant sexual beasts, unable to control our urges, unable to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it in our pants. Source: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2004/at42.htm

ANC MPs cheered and applauded.

Back to the study - it concludes:

Access to appropriate public health practice is often determined by a small number of political leaders. In the case of South Africa, many lives were lost because of a failure to accept the use of available ARVs to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in a timely manner."

In South Africa, a small number of powerful leaders use excessive power to control the course of this country. The disbanding of the Scorpions, an elite crime fighting unit loved by the people and feared by the criminals, is a case in point.

Don’t reward the ANC for past failures. And don’t listen to Bishop Tutu either. Vote next year for an opposition party. Say no to the ANC hegemony.

Comments

[Lawrence]

Hmm Steve it ain't so simple, I don't care for the ANC and I think that Mbeki was and is out of touch with the suffering of most South Africans and erstwhile ANC supporters, the ANC has sold the poor down the river. But the opposition ain't any better in many ways, like the DA and their supporters care about the poor? Not at all and they largely don't even pretend to. The one thing that would improve with the DA would be our foreign policy, less support for Third World despots like Mugabe and others, and more friendly relations with the West, but in terms of domestic policies I don't really see any fundamental difference.

[Steve]

Lawrence,
1 - The DA isn't the only opposition party - though they are the party I would endorse

2 - You need to understand how parliament works. The ANC would still govern but with a smaller majority they would need to reaccustom themselves with parliamentary processes and the fact that we are supposed to be a democracy.

I don't buy your argument one bit. Perhaps you should read some opposition policy documents. The DA's policy on HIV/AIDS in 1999/2000 would have circumvented reports like the one I have mentioned in this article. In fact, virtually anyone else's policies on AIDS would have been better.

[Gary]

Vote IFP to make you free. If any of you would like to join the IFP facebook group please let me know.

[Gary]

It's true that the DA are too White and only seem concerned about the interests of the White middle class.
But there are an abundance of other choices.
Check them out.

[Lawrence]

Steve give me a break I know the DA are not the only other opposition party, really no kidding! But they are the only other viable party. As for the IFP Gary, I think they are difficult to categorise, in some ways preferable to the ANC I'm sure but this is faint praise..

[Gary]

www.ifp.org.za

First things first. The IFP has always seen the gut-wrenching poverty, which daily strangles millions of South Africans as the underlying cause of social strife and disease in our society. Although abject poverty is largely confined to rural areas, it is no stranger to urban settings, including Johannesburg. The IFP views poverty as an individual's condition. The task of its eradication must therefore count on improving one person's plight at a time. The IFP advocates a comprehensive strategy that shifts the drive for economic development from the government and the public sector onto the individual and the private sector initiative. In doing so, the IFP is challenging the ANC's implicit assumption about the role of government which renders the public sector all-powerful with the capacity to intervene and contribute positively in every nook and cranny of our society.

JOB CREATION

The best the ruling party can say for itself is that it has achieved jobless growth. Contrary to its empty claims about job creation, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shed since 1994. It remains an uphill struggle to find a job on the labour market that is not accommodating new entrants, alone tackling structural unemployment. The IFP has consistently opposed inflexible labour laws that make it near impossible to fire redundant employees and thus discourage employers from hiring new workforce. The IFP advocates policies that redirect the bulk of empowerment initiatives from the BEE to more broad-based measures, namely a vigorous promotion of informal sector-style entrepreneurial flair which, in the Johannesburg context, has plenty of potential in exploiting local tourism.

CRIME

Let us be absolutely clear - the levels of crime in South Africa are intolerable. Crime is perpetrated by criminals who feel encouraged by the fact that the rest of us, beginning with our government, are not serious about it. We underestimate the power of respect in families and in communities. We mislead criminals with our double-faced attitude towards the law. When respect for the law disappears and powerful people or groups can break the law with impunity, then the universal rule of law inevitably collapses. When the outward form of the law is maintained, but the respect for the law is gone and people feel only the need to make a pretense of being ruled by the law while ignoring its spirit, then the rule of law becomes purely procedural. The IFP advocates the return to a universal rule of law for everyone to abide by. We have to do away with double standards for the privileged few and the unprivileged many.

SERVICE DELIVERY

The national cabinet, we are told, has devoted more than 60 percent of the state budget to local and provincial government. This may well be a waste of money when half of all municipalities are dysfunctional, councils have failed to collect R40 billion in arrears, and billions are left unspent in provincial coffers each year.

An Afrobarometer survey, published last year during a conference on local government in Durban, shows that South Africans have a generally negative perception about local government and service delivery. Too many individuals are humiliated and experience poor service. Instead of the current bureaucratic state, the IFP envisages an enabling state that commissions the provision of basic services from a range of providers rather than provides these services by itself. Ours is a new entrepreneurial state that preaches decentralized management and calls for an expanded role of the private sector in service delivery.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

When the ANC campaigners knock on your door to tell you how much they care about you and your community, tell them the truth: they don't.
There has been a palpable sense of civil discontent in many communities.
As a local government consultant recently observed in the media, "residents have grown sick of watching well-paid municipal managers and mayors drive past in luxury cars while they wait for water from a stand-pipe at the end of the street". The IFP is not campaigning for an entrepreneurial state because it worships market forces or because it likes to sound businesslike. The IFP does this because it cares about our people. We care more than our professionally compassionate critics from the labour unions, who have been persistently blocking structural reform of local government.

HIV/AIDS

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is the most serious socio-economic crisis South Africans have ever faced. This disease can only be defeated against a backdrop of hope. The fatalism which has permeated the HIV/AIDS debate in South Africa, beginning at the top and filtering down to all governmental levels, must be overcome first. The IFP will bring prevention and treatment where the government interacts with people
closest: to all clinics, hospitals, care centres, schools, and sports and recreational facilities under local government jurisdiction. The IFP will direct all local government-sponsored counseling, testing, assistance, legal support and targeted campaigning to make HIV/AIDS a major priority. This approach is short on bureaucracy and big on action.

HOUSING

The IFP remains skeptical about the government's commitment to eradicate shacks by 2014. This may well be yet another broken promise in the making. The IFP advocates a more holistic and sustainable approach to government housing that ensures that the individuals who are allocated housing units will be able to afford and maintain them. The IFP also promotes wholesale revitalization of hostels making them more habitable as family units.

BILLING SYSTEM

Under the ANC control, the local government has seen many blackouts, not least electrical. These are as much a result of mismanagement as poor accounting. The IFP advocates a more stringent accounting and a more transparent management of funds. The increased deposits that are now being demanded of Johannesburg residents to ensure the smooth running of municipal services are likely to finance inefficiency and red tape.

CORRUPTION

The IFP cannot overemphasise the need to wipe out corruption in order to run municipalities effectively. The IFP will act quickly and decisively should any of our councillors be found guilty of corruption. The IFP will create an early warning system to detect malfunctioning councils and dismiss councillors who do not attend council and community meetings.