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Blaming Mbeki is unhelpful, says Tutu

November 25, 2009 Edition 1

Pointing fingers at the administration of former president Thabo Mbeki was not helpful in dealing with South Africa's HIV/Aids problems, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said yesterday.

"I just think it's enough to say, we have had a disaster and... how do we ensure that we don't repeat what we know happened," he said.

"It was a bad policy, most people admit that ... Let's move on."

Tutu was speaking at his Cape Town office during the signing of a R3.5 million French Development Agency funding agreement for the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. His comments follow renewed controversy in recent weeks over the HIV/Aids policy pursued by Mbeki and his administration, which flirted with Aids denialists, backed quack remedies and was markedly reluctant to roll out antiretroviral drugs.

Tutu said that labelling that policy "genocide", as some critics had done, was not helpful.

"Bad things happen," he said. "The point of the matter is that people have suffered, people have died who needn't have died. Now we know that that is the situation, I think we just have to direct our energies to correcting it and doing the right things by the people who are suffering now."

The development agency funding follows a promise made to Tutu last year by French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

"This is marvellous," Tutu told French ambassador Jacques Lapouge at yesterday's signing ceremony.

"When is your president coming again?"

Agency chief executive Jean-Michel Severino said he and his colleagues were fulfilling a spiritual duty by handing over the cash, because when Sarkozy made the initial promise, Tutu had told him he would go to hell if he did not honour it. - Sapa