http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5265432.stm

Stephen Lewis
The government has a lot to atone for. I’m of the opinion that they
can never achieve redemption

South Africa Aids policy attacked
The United Nations special envoy for Aids in Africa has closed a major
conference on the disease with a sharp critique of South Africa’s
government.

Speaking at the end of the week-long gathering in Toronto, Canada,
Stephen Lewis said South Africa promoted a "lunatic fringe" attitude
to HIV/Aids.

Mr Lewis described the government as "obtuse, dilatory and negligent
about rolling out treatment".

A South African delegate reportedly hit back over Mr Lewis’ comments.

Health ministry official Sibani Mngadi told the AFP news agency that
Mr Lewis had a "vendetta" against South Africa.

Earlier another keynote speaker said South Africa’s health minister
should resign because she had minimised the role of anti-retroviral
drugs.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has strongly defended her approach to
fighting HIV and Aids, saying that building up the immune system is of
critical importance.

She said this week she wanted to give citizens choices, including
traditional treatments like garlic, lemons and beetroots, instead of
championing anti-retroviral drugs.

South Africa’s governing ANC party has said the government approach to
the disease was "responsible and integrated".

Harsh words

The International Aids Conference began in Toronto earlier this week
with high hopes.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates made the opening
remarks, and spoke optimistically of the potential of male
circumcision and microbicides to reduce levels of HIV infection.

Hours before Mr Lewis spoke on Friday, 44 activists from South
Africa’s main Aids lobby group were arrested while protesting against
Ms Tshabalala-Msimang’s policies.

The lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), had said it
would announce plans on Friday "to make sure the health minister is
sacked tomorrow".

Mr Lewis, who says he is "persona non grata" in South Africa as a
result of falling out with the health minister, criticised the arrest
of the group’s members.

"It really is distressing when the coercive apparatus of the state is
brought against the most principled members of society," he said.

‘Pavlovian betrayal’

The BBC’s Peter Greste, in Johannesburg, says Aids activists in South
Africa will applaud Mr Lewis’ comments.

He pulled few punches in a speech that drew loud cheers from the
Toronto audience.

South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
Tshabalala-Msimang has provoked fierce opposition at home
South Africa’s Aids policy is "more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of
a concerned and compassionate state," he said.

He derided the government’s policies as "wrong, immoral [and]
indefensible".

Up to 800 people a day die of Aids in South Africa, Mr Lewis said.

"The government has a lot to atone for. I’m of the opinion that they
can never achieve redemption."

Mr Lewis also reserved some scorn for the G8 group of leading
industrialised nations, who he said were undermining their own
promises made at Gleneagles in 2005 to fight Aids, TB and malaria in
Africa.

Funds were running dangerously low, Mr Lewis said, accusing the G8 of
a "Pavlovian betrayal" of poorer southern nations.