South African AIDS pressure group TAC is determined to make President Thabo Mbeki retract claims he apparently made that the group is in the pay of US drug companies, an official said Tuesday.
Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) vice-chairman Mark Heywood told AFP the organization had asked the independent Public Protector, an ombudsman, to investigate whether the president had indeed made the remarks.
"We have asked him to find that these allegations are not true and to instruct the president's office to issue a statement on the truth, to take back what he said," Heywood said.
Members of parliament, who have preferred to remain anonymous, have claimed Mbeki made the accusation during an address to the parliamentary caucus of his African National Congress (ANC) party last week.
Mbeki, according to MPs quoted in the local press, claimed that the TAC, a lobby group for anti-retroviral drugs for pregnant women, not only was funded by US pharmaceutical companies but had infiltrated trade unions in South Africa.
The South African president, who has caused a furor in South Africa by his dogmatic refusal to accept that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, added that he believed the emphasis placed on the HIV/AIDS epidemic was the result of a conspiracy by drug companies.
"Obviously there is an argument that it suits pharmaceutical companies to promote the theory that HIV causes AIDS because then you need drugs, not development," one MP quotes Mbeki as saying.
The TAC denied outright it is funded by drug companies, saying their money comes from the European Union and non-governmental organizations.
The group's constitution states explicitly that the TAC should be independent of government and the pharmaceutical industry. "We will guard this independence fearlessly," said TAC chairman Zackie Achmat.
"Everybody knows I am not a lover of drugs companies," he added.
The HIV-positive Achmat, who refuses to take anti-retrovirals in protest at Mbeki's AIDS policies, said the worst of Mbeki's alleged remarks was that TAC had infiltrated trade unions.
"There is a genuine disrespect for the autonomy of the unions by suggesting they have been infiltrated," he said. "Unions are seeing their members dying every day."
Mbeki claims AIDS might also be caused by Third World ills such as poverty, malnutrition and disease, and has stated that a virus cannot cause a syndrome like AIDS.
Mbeki's office has refused to comment on the issue, saying the president's remarks were not made for public debate.
"This is not government business, so I don't think we can comment," said presidential spokeswoman Tasneem Carrim -- CAPE TOWN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
