Washington, D.C. — President Thabo Mbeki leaves Washington Wednesday with the committment he sought for continuing a binational structure between South Africa and the United States. He also won backing - though still general - for his Millennium African Recovery Plan (MAP). But his approach to the AIDS pandemic ravaging South Africa remains a subject of controversy.
The Binational Commission established during the Clinton Administration will now become a "Binational Forum," with secretariats in both nations coordinating the 10 working committees that were created by the now-abolished old commission. The U.S. secretariat will be run by the State Department and National Security Council; South Africa's by the Foreign Ministry in Pretoria. Establishing a new working committee on health is planned.
According to a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity, this new Forum is part of "two special relationships" - Nigeria and South Africa. "We talk about a strategic approach toward Africa, and that's with South Africa and with Nigeria. And when President Obasanjo was here, we also discussed establishing working groups with the Nigerians."
Speaking at the National Press Club, Mbeki, who came to the United States anxious to continue South Africa's special strategic relationship with the U.S., declared himself satisfied with the restructured arrangement. "We are very, very encouraged that the structures of coordination with South Africa will indeed be strengthened," he told a luncheon audience of journalists. "Strong bonds" with the U.S., Mbeki added, "are critical to the challenges we have to face."
In South Africa, Mbeki said, those challenges are poverty and a "racial divide" left over from the apartheid era. Across Africa, Mbeki said, infectious diseases, poverty, conflict, environmental stress, poor or nonexistant infrastructure and huge debt burdens combine to keep Africa underdeveloped.
To meet these challenges, Mbeki also came to Washington seeking support for the recovery plan that under an Organization of African Unity mandate he and the Presidents of Nigeria and Algeria first came together to consider in 1999.
The Millennium African Recovery Plan sets an afrocentric agenda aimed at fostering stability across the African continent and encouraging economic development. Its broader purpose is to turn the image of Africa around. Mbeki thinks that can only happen when there is a continental approach to tackling Africa's problems. "The one place in the world that continues to communicate negative images about itself is Africa," says Mbeki.
Tuesday night, speaking at a Corporate Council for Africa dinner in front of an audience largely made up of persons in business and investment, Mbeki said he felt that South Africa had a special responsibility to Africa because "many, many countries, particularly in Southern Africa, paid a very high price in order that we be free."
A new generation of African leaders has also emerged according to Mbeki, "a pool of leaders who say to themselves this cannot continue....Let us find a way as Africans ourselves to address these issues."
President Bush "supports the goals of the Millennium African Recovery Plan," according to the senior administration official. He "assured President Mbeki of the U.S. support for those general principles and goals." How that will translate into words and action at next months' G8 meeting where Mbeki expects U.S. backing for the plan is unclear. The MAP, now in its third draft, is still being worked on and its details remain unreleased.
On AIDS, Mbeki is arguing for a wholistic approach to tackling the disease that would include dealing with other health problems such as malnutrition and the lack of clean water, which recently contributed to a cholera outbreak in South Africa.
"The health of a human being is not something you address merely with drugs and medicine," Mbeki said. He used as an example a doctor treating a patient for tuberculosis, who would have to treat not only the disease but the factors that would help prevent the patient from getting TB again. "The immune system can become compromised by a lot of things, not only a virus," Mbeki said. "We want to take a comprehensive approach."
Asked why he did not attend the U.N. AIDS conference, the South African president replied that it was a ministerial conference and that South Africa had sent a strong delegation. The president also said that he could not be in two places at once. "By the time [South Africa's delegation] was speaking in their alloted time, I was still in the air coming here." In any case, Mbeki said, "What the mininsters said at the U.N. AIDS conference is no different from what I would have said."
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Mbeki who has been criticized for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS indicated that he still wasn't sure about the link. "I don't know," he replied when asked if he thought there was a link. The question was one for scientists to answer, Mbeki added. "I don't think my personal belief is relevant to scientific fact."
He said he was not opposed to the use of drugs, including anti-retroviral drugs, but even if their cost drops, South Africa at this point does not have the capacity to manage and monitor their effective use. Nations like the United States need to "work with South Africa to build this capacity," Mbeki said.
Earlier in the day President Mbeki flew to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where in a city suburb he visited Merck & Company, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Merck is researching an immune system vaccine. "What Merck is saying to us this morning is that [scientists] are working on a vaccine which would have an impact on the immune system, that the immune system is then able to fight the virus," he told reporters there. "I think that is really a major breakthrough."
Mbeki left Washington Wednesday evening.
