In the following eight years of his presidency, Mbeki continued to express sympathy for HIV/AIDS denialism, and instituted policies denying antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients.
[2] Instead of providing these drugs, which he described as "poisons",[3] shortly after he was elected to the presidency, he appointed Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as the country's health minister, who promoted the use of unproven herbal remedies such as ubhejane, garlic, beetroot, and lemon juice to treat AIDS,[2][4][5] which led to her acquiring the nickname "Dr.
[11] Given that Mbeki explicitly accused supporters of the consensus position on HIV/AIDS of racism,[12] it has also been proposed that his denialist views arose from a history of racist portrayals of black people in South Africa under the apartheid system.
[15] In 2004, Theodore F. Sheckels of Randolph-Macon College argued that Mbeki, while discussing HIV/AIDS as president of South Africa, attempted to portray "the West" as the scapegoat in order to unite the country's black majority.
[16] Barton Gellman has proposed an alternative explanation for Mbeki's views—namely, that he is "a sort of restless, roving intellect who likes to surf the Internet and is accustomed to being a dissident who allies himself against establishments.
[18] During his presidency, which lasted from then until 1999, Mandela remained largely indifferent to HIV/AIDS, and did not speak out about the danger it posed to South Africa until the early 2000s.
The advantages over existing ARV drugs which proved appealing to Mbeki included being 200 times less expensive than antiretroviral triple therapy, and the possibility of bypassing the Western medical establishment if it was proven to work.
However, the fact remained that the makers of Virodene had previously been denied a license by the South African Medicines Control Council (MCC).
[23] On October the 28th, Mbeki gave a speech to the National Council of Provinces in which he touched upon the issue of HIV/AIDS, and especially whether his government should distribute ARV drugs.
[24] On March 19, 2000, it was reported that Mbeki had consulted biochemist David Rasnick and history professor Charles Geshekter, both of whom are AIDS denialists, for advice on HIV/AIDS.
"[25] On April 20, 2000, Mbeki sent a five-page letter to Bill Clinton in which he describes AIDS as a "uniquely African catastrophe", and compared the "persecution" of HIV/AIDS denialists to the treatment of black people in South Africa during the apartheid era.
"His views were considered to be so threatening to the scientific establishment that he was forced to publicly recant", Zuma was quoted as saying in a statement released by the office of the presidency.
[28] Later that year, Mbeki convened a panel of 33 scientists whom he referred to as "experts", of whom about half were AIDS denialists such as Peter Duesberg and Harvey Bialy.
[26] Nicoli Nattrass has blamed Duesberg and his supporters on this panel, as well as Mbeki, for the popularity of AIDS denialism in South Africa.
For example, many South African trade and banking officials expressed concern that Mbeki's statements were driving away potential investors.
In an opinion piece written four years later, Roger Cohen cited this remark as evidence that Mbeki considered HIV/AIDS to be "a fabrication foisted on Africans by whites determined to distract the continent from real problems of racism and poverty, and accepted by blacks afflicted with the slave mentality engendered by apartheid.
[46] On October 26, 2006, South Africa's government announced that they were reversing their previous policies on treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, and would now be distributing ARV drugs through the country's public health services.
[50] On August 31, 2007, after Tshabalala-Msimang came under attack for denying that HIV caused AIDS and promoting unorthodox treatments for the disease, Mbeki leapt to her defense, writing in ANC Today that she would go down in history as "...one of the pioneer architects of a South African public health system constructed to ensure that we achieve the objective of health for all our people, and especially the poor."
"[6] On February 7, 2008, research by Nicoli Nattrass estimated that the failure of Mbeki's administration to provide ARV drugs until 2006 was responsible for about 343,000 deaths.
[7] Later that year, a study by Pride Chigwedere et al., published in the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, estimated that Mbeki's HIV/AIDS policies were responsible for "more than 330,000" deaths.
Hogan's views on AIDS reflected a dramatic shift from her predecessor's: in December 2008, she promised to increase the supply of ARV drugs available to pregnant women in South Africa, as well as to improve HIV prevention programs.
The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, also criticized these policies, saying that the government was "sinning" by "withholding truth and maintaining the silence of denial" over AIDS.
[57] After Chigwedere et al.'s research estimating AIDS denialist policies in South Africa led to over 300,000 deaths was published,[8] philosopher Peter Singer cited it in support of his conclusion that "Mbeki, like Mandela, was active in the struggle against apartheid.
"[58] Other critics, such as Karl Kruszelnicki, have noted that South Africa, unlike many of its fellow sub-Saharan African countries, "...has both the medical personnel and wealth to meet the HIV/AIDS challenge head-on", making it especially unfortunate that these resources were not used for so long.