Should she stay or should she go?
After her performance in at the AIDS-congress in Canada, the call for the firing of SA minister of Health Manto (Tshabalala-Msimang) is louder than ever. The conference-stand of SA was said to be filled with no more than some "salad-ingredients" like onions, beetroot and lemon juice. These veggies form the core of her remedy of HIV/AIDS and not ARV-medicine (HIV remmers in Dutch) as most people would like to see. For a lot of western people it is incomprehensible that she can stay on as a minister since in their eyes her lack of support for ARV's causes more people to get infected and/or die than necessary.
On the sight of the Mail and Guardian people can post their opinions on the question:
Should Minister Manto loose her job?
I am showing you some of the fragments posted on the site, to show you that the discussion isn't as clear cut as it is in most western eyes:
"I am fully behind our minister, and as one of the people living with HIV, I have been following wome of the natural methods and they work well for me. My CD4 count was low and I used natural herbs and it was boosted. Different things work for different people. Let us not push for the western medication in so much that we become rigid and not want to try some other things that work."
"It is about time that people understand that Ministers implement government policy and not their individual ideas.If people are not happy then why don`t they vote for the DA and reinstate grand apartheid."
"Quite odd is the fact that a bunch of white people are trying to force a black person to do all in her power to improve the suffering of the poorer blacks affected by her decisions and unclear communications."
"It seems to me that TAC is pushing for pharmaceutical companies' interests ahead of common sense, while masquarading as a mouthpiece for HIV positive people. "
(TAC is the Treatment Action Campaign, an organisation in favour of ARV's, LK)
"And I dont understand what's the hullabaloo is about, coz Manto stated clearly that in addition to people taking ARV drugs they must maintain a healthy diet. She never asserted that people should disregard ARV for beetroot and garlic.
Its only cynical white media, which is hell bent on twisting her utterances, to mislead poeple!"
"Government is also for traditional medicine, which has served millions of South Africans and Africans very well over centuries and millenia. The problem is that even though there is anecdotal evidence that natural herbs do work, the legacy of apartheid insured that these were never regulated or tested."
A response from the USA:
"...have you ever wondered just why it is that HIV and the HIV tests are only going off on the least accepted human beings on this planet of Gay men and Black Heterosexuals. In particular, the poorest of the blacks that suffer from poor hygiene, poor nutrition, bleek and highly stressed lives?
If the west had been fortunate enough to have such as Manto and Mbeki at the helm, there would have been no false declaration of HIV as being behind AIDS, that was given on the White house steps of the most Homophobic president, with no scientific proof of the statement being offered."
For the whole statements go to www.mg.co.za
On the sight of the Mail and Guardian people can post their opinions on the question:
Should Minister Manto loose her job?
I am showing you some of the fragments posted on the site, to show you that the discussion isn't as clear cut as it is in most western eyes:
"I am fully behind our minister, and as one of the people living with HIV, I have been following wome of the natural methods and they work well for me. My CD4 count was low and I used natural herbs and it was boosted. Different things work for different people. Let us not push for the western medication in so much that we become rigid and not want to try some other things that work."
"It is about time that people understand that Ministers implement government policy and not their individual ideas.If people are not happy then why don`t they vote for the DA and reinstate grand apartheid."
"Quite odd is the fact that a bunch of white people are trying to force a black person to do all in her power to improve the suffering of the poorer blacks affected by her decisions and unclear communications."
"It seems to me that TAC is pushing for pharmaceutical companies' interests ahead of common sense, while masquarading as a mouthpiece for HIV positive people. "
(TAC is the Treatment Action Campaign, an organisation in favour of ARV's, LK)
"And I dont understand what's the hullabaloo is about, coz Manto stated clearly that in addition to people taking ARV drugs they must maintain a healthy diet. She never asserted that people should disregard ARV for beetroot and garlic.
Its only cynical white media, which is hell bent on twisting her utterances, to mislead poeple!"
"Government is also for traditional medicine, which has served millions of South Africans and Africans very well over centuries and millenia. The problem is that even though there is anecdotal evidence that natural herbs do work, the legacy of apartheid insured that these were never regulated or tested."
A response from the USA:
"...have you ever wondered just why it is that HIV and the HIV tests are only going off on the least accepted human beings on this planet of Gay men and Black Heterosexuals. In particular, the poorest of the blacks that suffer from poor hygiene, poor nutrition, bleek and highly stressed lives?
If the west had been fortunate enough to have such as Manto and Mbeki at the helm, there would have been no false declaration of HIV as being behind AIDS, that was given on the White house steps of the most Homophobic president, with no scientific proof of the statement being offered."
For the whole statements go to www.mg.co.za
posted by Laura Kors at Friday, August 25, 2006
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