South African President Thabo Mbeki has taken yet another intentional and stupid step along his meandering backward path of dealing ... or actually, not dealing ... with the huge HIV/AIDS crisis in his country -- he's fired his Deputy Health Minister, a knowledgeable, staunch and outspoken advocate for greater and more aggressive action against the virus. The reason? She attended an AIDS conference in Spain against his wishes.

Do the phrase "politically motivated" ring a bell? How about "short sighted", "ignorant", "arrogant", or "just plain don't care"?

Sheesh. The guy just doesn't get it, and he never has. If you recall, back in the early days of his presidency he insisted, against a world of evidence to the contrary, that HIV did not cause AIDS.

His pick to run the AIDS show is the much-maligned Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, famous for her stand against antiretroviral drugs ... what an idiot! ... so now that the Deputy Minister is out, the Minister gets to do her thing without interference from someone who actually knows something and cares.

Yeah ... that's the way to deal with a pandemic that puts your country as Number Two in the world for AIDS infection and deaths.

Tshabalala-Msimang has served as Health Minister since June 1999 ... an era that has seen millions of South Africans become infected with the virus and die, leaving more AIDS orphans than in every other country in the world ... and her take has been, shall we say, less than helpful. She has spent a great deal of her time focusing on drawing attention to potential toxicities from antiretrovirals and touting instead "nutritional approaches to treatment".

Thankfully, under the present South African system of government, the Cabinet can override the President, and it looks like that's what happened in 2003 when the country finally formulated a national treatment plan that included the use of antiretroviral drugs.

The woman Mbeki just fired was a strong supporter of this move, and her firing would appear to indicate the President's position has not changed much since the days he doubted the link between HIV and AIDS.

People are noticing, however, and former UN envoy, Stephen Lewis, has accused Mbeki of presiding over an "AIDS apocalypse".

"It is said that 900 men, women and children die every day in South Africa of AIDS-related illnesses. It's Armageddon every 24 hours," Lewis wrote in an opinion piece for South African newspapers. "Other than South Africa, every government in the high-prevalence countries is moving heaven and earth to keep its people alive.

There's been no official reaction to Lewis' comments, as the powers-that-be were busy rubbing shoulders with Robert Mugabe at a southern African summit in Zambia.

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