In a groundbreaking study by Harvard, researchers conclude that policies instituted by the South African Government of actively denying life saving medications to HIV infected persons between 2000 -2005 directly resulted in the deaths of 365,000 people. The needless deaths the researchers contend were a direct result of Thabo Mbeki’s adherence of discredited AIDS denialist voodoo science. The International Criminal Court is bound to seek indictments in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity. It is not beyond the scope of these moral objectives to include the purposeful and malicious repudiation of sound medical science by leaders that directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings.
According to the study 19% of the adult population in South Africa is infected with HIV or about 5.5 million people;
it is estimated that about 320,000 persons died of AIDS, almost 900 deaths per day. Approximately 1.2 million children younger than 17 years have lost 1 or both parents due to the epidemic.
In the late 1990’s with mother to child transmission skyrocketing, Mbeki announced to the world that his government would not be distributing zidovudine and nevirapine for the prevention of transmission and AIDS treatment because the drug was "toxic and dangerous to health" and even though the drug was widely available to the South African Government they were not going to provide it to their population;
President Mbeki’s government restricted the use of freely donated nevirapine4 and obstructed the acquisition of Global Fund grants.5 The facts of the case have never been denied.
Instead President Mbeki, supported his Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang who famously proposed garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as an AIDS cure.
Now I’m not a scientist, but what I gather the Harvard researchers calculated their data by estimating the number of people in South Africa who could have received antiretrovirals through government distribution with those much small population who managed to acquire the medications in some other fashion. With carefully outlining that with the help of cost reduction, the increase in global resource to combat transmission and the availability of resources under PEPFAR the researchers could accurately estimate the number of people who could have received these life-saving medications. Then by carefully reviewing the efficacy rates of those in South Africa who were able to receive these medications they were able to extrapolate some high confidence projections.
In an article about the study in today’s New York Times by Cella W. Dugger, the methodology used by the researchers are considered "sound";
Epidemiologists and biostatisticians who reviewed the study for The New York Times said the researchers had based their estimates on conservative assumptions and used a sound methodology.
"They have truly used conservative estimates for their calculations, and I would consider their numbers quite reasonable," James Chin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said in an e-mail message.
The results are nothing but horrific;
Briefly, more than 330,000 lives or approximately 2.2 million person-years were lost because a feasible ARV treatment program was not implemented in South Africa. Thirty-five thousand babies were born with HIV, resulting in 1.6 million person-years lost by not implementing a mother-to-child transmission prophylaxis program using nevirapine. The total lost benefits of ARVs are at least 3.8 million person-years for the period 2000–2005.
But the science behind the findings are indisputable and in the narrative in the [ New York Times article it clearly demonstrates that Mbeki resistance to life saving treatment was purely political and not based on any legitimate scientific rational;
Mr. Ramatlhodi himself acknowledged in a recent interview that in 2001 he sent a 22-page letter, drafted by Mr. Mbeki’s office, to another of Mr. Mbeki’s most credible critics, Prof. Malegapuru Makgoba, an immunologist who was one of South Africa’s leading scientists. The letter accused Professor Makgoba of defending Western science and its racist ideas about Africans at the expense of Mr. Mbeki.
This was in 2001 mind you, and the article continues to report that up to a year ago Mbeki acknowledged to a biographer that his views relatively the same as they were in 1999. In his conversation with this biographer Mbeki contended that the cause of AIDS was still in dispute and that it may yet still be due to simple malnutrition. More indicative of his thought pattern was a reference to a document that accused the west of "peddling centuries-old white racist beliefs that depicted Africans as sexually rapacious".
Cultural antagonisms are not a basis in which to deny your citizens life, therefore I believe the international Criminal Court should indict Former President Mbeki and his minions for Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. I believe that his crimes warrant this level of justice and specified in the Rome Statue of the ICC;
Article 6 - Genocide
For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
I believe that with 19% of the population in South Africa being infected with HIV, they are indeed a "national group" who are in need of extra protections. It is clear that several conditions of genocide have been met, (a) members of this group have been killed (320,000+ of them) for purposely denying them the medications that would have extended their lives. Having been close and personal to it I know that depending on the opportunistic infections, death by AIDS without medication is a terrible death. (b) Knowing that you could have been spared this death if it were not for your leaders’ unwillingness to provide you with treatment is without a doubt mental harm. (c) In the face of thousands of credible scientific sources while ignoring the pleas of medical personal from around the world, these people were allowed to die.
The same conditions can be applied to article 7 of the Rome Statue, Crimes against Humanity. Over 320,000+ lives were purposely lost not primarily by the pandemic but buy a crisis of conscience that allowed these souls to be insignificant to Mbeki. With all the glitz and hoopla over resources sent to Africa to battle the scourge that is HIV/AIDS, what are we telling its victims if we fail to hold leaders accountable? Justice can’t be delegated to cultural nuances or belittled in the face of past wrongs because if we allow that to happen...well what the fuck is the point?
Update I Some corrected me in the official definition of a National Group, which is defined as "a set of individuals whose identity is defined by a common country of nationality or national origin." Ok, but I still firmly believe when close to 19% of the population can be considered a subset of the larger population with special needs, including special protections from policies put in place designed to purposely inflict harm on this population, a special protection class needs to apply.
Update II Question came up about Intent;
Intent is different from motive. Whatever may be the motive for the crime (land expropriation, national security, territorrial integrity, etc.), if the perpetrators commit acts intended to destroy a group, even part of a group, it is genocide.
I beleive Mbeki purposely allowed these people to die when he did in fact have the power to save them. I believe this is intent, although I'm not a lawyer.