Open
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A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb.
TITLES
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Download (PDF, 1.2 MB). Debating AZT: Mbeki and the AIDS drug controversy was published in January 2001 and sold in bookshops and stocked by libraries throughout South Africa. A few paperback copies are still available. The manuscript of this book, sent up to the Health Minister in mid-1999, and read by President Thabo Mbeki, detonated the AIDS controversy in South Africa. A leaflet Why do President Mbeki and Dr Tshabalala-Msimang warn against the use of ARV drugs like AZT? (PDF, 98 KB) provides a quick updated overview of the subject. REVIEWS: the ravings of [a] drivelling conspiracy-theorist, loony, crackpot, fruitcake. … I'm a professional at spotting weirdos I do not intend to engage in nonsensical debates on AZT or other AIDS-related matters. I find the issues you raise a total waste of energy but perhaps more exciting for ignorant people in the field. … Remember that I am the scientist and not you I am emeritus professor of organic chemistry at UND. I am also a doctor of science of Oxford University, and although I know little about AIDS and less about AZT, I am trained to evaluate scientific argument. Your book on AZT ranks among the biggest tosh that I have ever read, and far the most sustained. I would not think the distinguished people whose approving comments you quote can have read much of it. I have no wish to argue with you, it would be impossible to penetrate your ignorant conceit, I would not wish to criticise your book, it would take too long. I do not know whether your basic claims about AIDS are correct or not, I have not seen the evidence, your book is not evidence, it is a prosecution brief drawn up by an inferior lawyer you are justified in sounding a warning against the long-term therapeutic use of AZT, or its use in pregnant women, because of its demonstrated toxicity and side effects. Unfortunately, the devastating effects of AZT emerged only after the final level of experiments was well underway … Your effort is a worthy one. … I hope you succeed in convincing your government not to make AZT available He has tracked and digested every important reference to AZT in contemporary medical literature. The result is a comprehensive and alarming review of the findings of medical researchers on the clinical use of the drug. [Based on the research literature he reviews] the argument [against it] is devastatingly clear It must be said in Mbeki’s defence that Brink … is an able lawyer who argues his case with persuasive force. … “That was the first time I became aware of this alternative viewpoint,” Mbeki told me. … He was able to persuade the country’s most experienced investigative journalist, Martin Welz, of the validity of his case, so that Welz not only published a series of … articles on AIDS in his investigative magazine, Noseweek, but also wrote a rapturous foreword to Brink’s book on AZT “That,” Mbeki told me, “is what sparked it off” Why should a lawyer have to do the work that doctors and scientists ought to be doing? Christ this is good … beautifully written … extremely accomplished … so much data. Makes the opposition’s platitudes look embarrassingly hollow … Eleni and I think it’s really great No … you don’t [merely review the medical literature], it’s the way you write, it’s the way you put it superb, extremely well researched, analyzed, written. … I could not have done a better job. … Are you a scientist or do you collaborate with one? How could you survey so many scientific publications as an attorney? … Could you publish your article or a variant of it in a medical/scientific journal? It would strengthen our case no end if scientific papers of that quality would come from several sources, not only from Berkeley and Perth. ... I still can’t believe he wrote that. He’s really a molecular biologist pretending to be a lawyer Absolutely spectacular … superb ... the definitive refutation excellent … the best, most comprehensive review on AZT currently available Anthony Brink is a man of many parts: magistrate or barrister by day, musician by night … prose stylist. Above all, dedicated and fearless. … his book … is clear and crisp and his technical mastery most impressive outstanding … top dollar writing Deserves serious treatment. More strength to your arm Very good. Convinced me completely Absolutely amazing … a work of genius … he writes really well … I just love his one-liners very nice writing … you can’t really be a lawyer … I love the parallels with other past failed medical panaceas – calomel etc A hefty blow for free speech and against the strictures of dogma … Crisp. Logical. Sometimes over the top. Bristlingly intelligent. Exhausting. Acerbic. Sometimes vicious. For anyone who wants to know what Mbeki’s on about, it’s all here, in a nutshell an outstanding piece of work … enormously entertaining … expert, trenchant devastation of AZT apologists extremely courageous … I thought I was beyond shockability but [Brink’s] revelations were stupefying. I think the marketing of AZT to pregnant women is an obscenity wonderful … soldier on! [AZT: A Medicine from Hell] is a well written, lucid article for anybody to read. … your arguments about prescribing this drug are excellent. … Perhaps when more people like yourself who are not scientists come out publicly to clarify the issue on this drug, pregnant women will be spared! Your article will now be additional prescribed reading for the students in my class What a good comprehensive review of the literature you performed! … During my research I noticed a lot of resistance from many different people to believe our data. In general there is resistance to the “bad news” amazing a masterful piece a rare combination of incisive insight, entertaining wit, profound perspicacity, all of which and a lot more being available through his racy, delicious pen. He exhibits the uncommon gift of a timely turn of phrase that truly adds spice to the intellectual content. … Mr Brink’s book will have an Illichean impact likely to cure the increasingly sick HIV-AIDS establishment in particular and the medical and governmental establishments in general. His exposé is both a diagnosis and a cure. … [It] will remain a classic eye-opener to the misdeeds of modern medicine for decades to come. I am also sure that Mr Illich will give his imprimatur to Mr Brink at first reading I started reading it the day it arrived, found it so fascinating that I … read it through to the end that evening. A case of not being able to put it down. Remarkable research and brilliant writing Every South African should read it. … I couldn’t put it down It reads like a thriller, pulling you in … like a bebop solo, every line packed with information I laughed and I cried, I laughed and I cried I read it at work pinned between my desk and my knees and laughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks Riveting … [The] style is very funny; it’s a shame the subject-matter is so serious… Perhaps, after all, Thabo Mbeki is a visionary, not the fiddling fool he’s made out to be … [If you are] wondering what all the fuss is about, you will not find a more forceful or persuasive explanation … than in this book. … meticulously referenced, Debating AZT rattles the not-so-dusty medical skeletons of thalidomide, arsenic and mercury salts. It is a remorseless denunciation of the first and most widely used anti-HIV drug English translationHumour can sometimes be a political act of the utmost seriousness. Nothing is more dangerous than making untouchable people and institutions look ridiculous. … Be warned, the book has a strange effect on the reader. On one hand, it places something unbearably heavy, actually grotesque, on your shoulders, something you can't shrug off with integrity. On the other hand, don't be surprised if a smile creeps over your lips every time you hear the words "AIDS expert". … The cherry on the cake, making Debating AZT a masterpiece, is the humour permeating every line, and the spaces between them. … Brink's style — the interplay of light-hearted humour and deadly seriousness — reminds me compellingly of the prophetic literature of the Bible. … Anthony Brink is not afraid of lawsuits. He writes in the style of gripping fiction. The book breaks taboos, not primarily because it tackles the taboo-laden subject of AIDS in South Africa, but also and especially because it disregards every conventional genre boundary. According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, taboos concern phenomena threatening to disrupt established systems of classification. In that sense, the author of this book is himself a taboo phenomenon: an advocate from KwaZulu-Natal who insouciantly ventures into the sacred theoretical field of medical science. … I cannot recommend Debating AZT highly enough — whether you are looking for a literary experience, fascinating history, a deeper understanding of the AIDS controversy, theological or philosophical reflections, or just a good laugh. If I were the Pope (or a leading AIDS researcher), I would stamp this book with my seal of approval: nihil obstat. It is written. No one will ever be able to say: "I didn't know." Humor kan soms ‘n politieke daad van die ernstigste aard wees. Niks is gevaarliker as om onaantasbare persone en instansies belaglik te maak nie. … Wees gewaarsku – die boek het ‘n vreemde uitwerking op die leser. Enersyds laai dit iets ondraaglik swaar – grotesk eintlik – op jou skouers, iets waarvan jy nie meer met integriteit kan afkom nie. Andersyds moet jy nie verbaas wees as daar na dese ‘n glimlag aan jou lippe kom pluk elke keer as jy die woord “AIDS expert” hoor nie. … Die kersie op die koek – wat van Debating AZT ‘n meesterstuk maak – is die humor waarvan elke reël, asook die spasies tussenin, deurtrek is. … Brink se styl – die samespel van ligsinnige humor en dodelike erns – laat my byvoorbeeld onwillekeurig dink aan die profetiese literatuur in die Bybel. … Anthony Brink deins nie terug vir “lawsuits” nie. Hy [skryf] in die styl van meeslepende fiksie. Die boek is ‘n taboebreker – nie in die eerste plek omdat dit die taboe-gelaaide tema van VIGS in Suid-Afrika aanvat nie – maar ook en veral omdat dit alle genre-matige grense verontagsaam. Volgens die antropoloog Mary Douglas het taboe te make met verskynsels wat dreig om gevestigde klassifikasieskemas te ontwrig. Ook die outeur van hierdie boek is in dié sin ‘n taboeverskynsel: ‘n advokaat uit KwaZulu-Natal wat met innemende hubris die heilige teoretiese grond van die mediese wetenskap betree. … Ek kan nie Debating AZT sterk genoeg aanbeveel nie – of jy nou ‘n literêre ervaring wil hê, boeiende geskiedenis wil lees, meer te wete wil kom oor die VIGS-polemiek, tot teologiese en filosofiese besinning gebring wil word, of sommer net lekker wil lag. As ek die pous was (of ‘n leidende VIGS-navorser) sou ek die stempel van goedkeuring op hierdie boek aangebring het: nihil obstat. Dit staan geskrywe. Niemand sal ooit kan sê: “Ek het nie geweet nie” |
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Download (PDF, 1MB) The trouble with nevirapine is outlined on the back cover. Robert Kennedy Jnr. cited it eight times as his source in writing the nevirapine chapter of his #1 bestseller in 2021, The Real Anthony Fauci. REVIEWS: an amazing job ... brilliantly dissects an avoidable tragedy: how misconceptions and misunderstandings about a new medicine ... caused a pointless, costly and toxic mess that still needs clearing up. An important story with lessons for all of us – and readable with it an expertly written piece about this very dangerous drug Brink's meticulously researched ... detailed exposé on the controversial AIDS drug ... reads like a sophisticated crime novel and is full of harrowing facts you won't find anywhere else
Download (PDF, 1.25 MB) Lying and Thieving: The fraudulent scholarship of Ronald Suresh Roberts in Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki, with reference to chapters 8 and 9 on AIDS, 'A clash of fundamentalisms 1: medical politics' and 'A clash of fundamentalisms 2: racial politics', is summed up bluntly on its back cover: This critical analysis of chapters 8 and 9 of Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki (Johannesburg: STE, 2007) demonstrates Ronald Suresh Roberts to be an extensive plagiarist, a fabricator and falsifier of history, and the author of a colossal literary fraud, and accordingly so grossly unprofessional and discreditable a writer that he's unfit to be relied upon for any purpose, not even for directions to the post office. After reading Lying and Thieving shortly after its publication in November 2007 (in paperback sold by Clarke's Bookshop in Cape Town, and in PDF free online), both the publisher and editor of Fit to Govern agreed. STE Publishers cancelled the second impression then about to go to press, and its editor, the English historian and journalist James Sanders PhD, damned it as: the most serious case of plagiarism and literary fraud in South African literary history Discussing Lying and Thieving with Brink over lunch in Cape Town, Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic raved that: Everyone in Joburg has read it! (meaning the Johannesburg literati). And said he'd been astounded by Lying and Thieving's amazing detail! The book was a sensation in all the newspapers for several months, commencing with no less than four (4) articles in the same edition of the Sunday Times after the book was released, plus a prominent flag at the top of Page 2 calling attention to the drama. During a talk Mark Gevisser gave in Cape Town on 20 May 2008 about his biography Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred,he reported that Mbeki, evidently concerned to set the record straight, had written to him after it came out specifically to confirm that Gevisser had been right to describe him as an AIDS dissident, adding that if he simply looked at the evidence he would become one too. This expressly repudiated Ronald Suresh Roberts's opening claim in the first AIDS chapter of Fit to Govern: 'Thabo Mbeki is not now, nor has he ever been, an AIDS dissident.' The expanded January 2008 edition of Lying and Thieving included a new Introduction and five additional chapters: Mbeki's Castro Hlongwane bombshell More evidence of Roberts's plagiarism turned up and the editor of Fit to Govern, Dr James Sanders, agrees The mind of a rogue at work: Roberts's developing denigration of Brink in Fit to Govern from draft to draft Roberts's responses to the charges in Lying and Thieving How Roberts wrote Fit to Govern to order, chopping and changing his manuscript on Essop Pahad's secret instructions, and prostituting his 'intellectual independence' to mining capital The November 2008 reprint was reformatted to reduce the book to 300 pages and included an Endnote with five updates. The footnotes to Lying and Thieving are available for download. It's summed up in Brink's unpleasant letter to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz: Birds of a Feather (PDF, 160 KB): Fine letter and very appropriate Thanks ... A thumbs up from Chomsky is the best way to start the day |
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Download (PDF, 595 KB) Introducing AZT is a sequel to Debating AZT and includes research findings subsequently reported. The book has no author narrative and lets the drug's champions and critics speak for and against the drug themselves. Inventing AZT (PDF, 28 KB) in the appendices reports the scoop story related to me by the scientist who first synthesized the drug, telling how he invented it as a cell poison and how he changed his mind about the use of AZT in pregnancy after reading the foetal toxicity literature I reviewed in Debating AZT. Licensing AZT (PDF, 40 KB) recounts the grossly fraudulent manner in which the drug was approved by the American FDA.
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Download (PDF, 1.15 MB)
Poisoning our Children: AZT in pregnancy is a compendium of letters to the Medicines Control Council exhaustively reviewing the
foetal and neonatal toxicity literature on AZT. The Endnotes tell how Mbeki's and Dr
Tshabalala-Msimang's worst apprehensions have been realised, anticipated by the October 2008
TIG press statement
(PDF, 45KB), On the 50th anniversary of the thalidomide disaster, another tragedy of countless children
killed and maimed foretold, and a
final
letter
to Dr Tshabalala-Msimang
concerning AZT in pregnancy (PDF, 169 KB), both included in the appendices. An 8-page A5
leaflet
Why do Zackie Achmat, Nathan Geffen and Mark Heywood want pregnant African women and their newborn
babies given AZT? What AZT to does to unborn and newly born children (PDF, 341 KB) provides essential information about this horror.
REVIEWS:
'Clearly your knowledge-base in this subject extends far beyond ours'
The
back cover
will tell you about this book in preparation: a collection of ironic letters to the AIDS experts and other
AIDS promoters in South Africa, asking them a whole lot of foolish questions – only, perhaps not so
foolish. Included are:
A
letter
(PDF, 36 KB) to Constitutional Law expert Professor Pierre de Vos at the University of the Western Cape; a
letter
(PDF, 90KB) to Dr Olive Shisana, CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council and lead author of the 'South
African National HIV Prevalence, HIV Incidence, Behaviour and Communication Survey, 2005', followed by an
awkward
reminder
(PDF, 30 KB); a
letter
(PDF, 64KB) to South African National Blood Services CEO Professor Anthon Heyns; a
letter
(PDF, 31 KB) to Dr Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV/AIDS Clinicians Society;
some questions
(PDF, 44 KB) for leading AIDS journalist Tamar Kahn; a draft bill of indictment against Zackie Achmat on a
Charge of Genocide in the International Criminal Court at The Hague (linked below); a
letter
(PDF 93 KB) about it to
Mail
& Guardian
owner Trevor Ncube; a
letter
to Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School (PDF 170 KB); a
letter
to Litsa Delli, television producer, MEGA-TV, Athens, Greece (PDF, 171 KB) (here
are the hyperlinks in the Delli letter); and letters to
Sunday Times
editor Mondli Makhanya, South African Institute of Race Relations president Sipho Seepe,
Witness
editor John Conyngham, cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, psychology lecturer Desmond Painter, former Chief
Justice Arthur Chaskalson, former Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad, economics professor Alan
Whiteside's wife (if he has one), South African Communist Party Secretary General Blade Nzimande, and Onnie Mary
Phuthe, seriously injured by ARVs (most posted on the
TIG
site).
Download (PDF, 971 KB) REVIEWS:
Political journalist Terry Michael in Washington found this criminal complaint formally served on the ICC's chief prosecutor at The Hague 'side-splittingly funny. If the TAC founder weren't so deadly serious, he would qualify as a clueless buffoon in a TV comedy.' But veteran AIDS journalist Celia Farber in New York didn't think it amusing at all: 'I have read the complaint carefully, twice. Despite my 20 year immersion in the mind-reeling odyssey of the HIV Drugging Wars, I was disoriented, shocked, and wounded from this. It is so psychologically, politically, morally, and bio-chemically bizarre that one feels crazy from it. ... It builds calmly at first, then turns increasingly merciless, like the sealing bricks at the end of Poe's The Cask of Amontillado.'
One American reader reported, 'the complaint you filed with the ICC in The Hague remains one of my favorite works in the English language. ... [It] has always been a wonderful enigma, dripping with surreal irony yet so devoid of sarcasm that I could never categorize it as purely satirical. To me it was more Dante than Swift, and much of the genius (and horror!) lay in the fact that a literal reading not only worked, but seemed the most just. Whether it was actually an admissible legal document, I still don't know. Celia's comparison to The Cask of Amontillado was, um, apropoe (sorry).'
On the other hand, an attorney I know complained angrily that I'd 'gone too far' with it – but didn't the English painter Francis Bacon observe, 'Only by going too far can you go far enough'?
The July 2007 issue of Molotov Cocktail denounced it as 'hysterical fascist nonsense' by 'swivel-eyed Brink ... more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic' (the editor later changed his mind and became a chum). The Cape Argus billed it on street-poles as a 'BIZARRE CHARGE AGAINST ZACKIE', and published the TAC's view of it: 'A TAC spokesperson described the complaint as "the rantings and ravings of a madman" ... Almost every single quotation in his report was out of context.' It was 'rubbish beginning to end ... truly delusional ... laughable.'
In a press statement, 'The Treatment Action Campaign would like to inform the public and the media that it refuses to waste public resources in dignifying Anthony Brink's lunatic call for the International Criminal Court to prosecute its chairperson Zackie Achmat. Anthony Brink's actions serve only to insult the rationality of all sane people and the difficult experiences of millions of people who live with HIV/AIDS in the world. We therefore ask that the media not to call our organization for comment on this as this is our official comment.'
An editorial in the London Guardian on 13 September 2008 complained that the complaint went to the 'heights of surreality.' In his column in that paper a week later, resident medical journalist Dr Ben Goldacre described it as 'A new all-time low [in] South Africa, where President Thabo Mbeki has a long history of siding with the HIV denialists, who believe that HIV does not cause Aids (but that treatments for it do) [namely] Anthony Brink ... the man who is credited with introducing Mbeki to HIV denialism, who has helped cost the lives of tens of thousands of people needlessly deprived of effective treatments.' The complaint was 'ridiculous ... vicious and unhinged hatred ... full-on fruitcake action... . This is supposed to be a serious war crimes document, remember.'
Again in WIRED in June 2009, Goldacre frothed: 'After a litany of horrors, we come to the most challenging point of the story. In 2007, to great media coverage, ... Brink filed a formal complaint against Zackie Achmat at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, accusing him of genocide for successfully campaigning to gain access to HIV drugs for all South Africans...'
Likewise missing the irony, a German friend deplored it as 'sadistic.' On the other hand, an African supporter of mine told me that he read bits out to his mates and had them all rolling about laughing. As did a Dutch pal; but then it's been said that the Dutch have 'an endless appetite for venom served with a wink.'
So is it serious? Is it a joke? Is it a serious joke – 'an elaborate spoof' as one reader put it? A political prank, a stunt in Propaganda of the Deed as the anarchists used to say? AIDS promoter Chris Noble thought so: 'Brink has done this as a carefully calculated publicity stunt. ... I suspect that Brink knows full well that his submission will be used for toilet paper. He doesn't care. He got the publicity he wanted. He got his name in several papers and he got interviewed on several radio stations.' (Very true!)
Read it and decide for yourself. You may conclude like the TAC's Mark Heywood did, complaining on the radio, that I wanted his chum Achmat 'tortured.' Or you may read the complaint as a parody of a formal criminal arraignment—a satirical attack on Western show trials generally—set in high legal language, but cut with mounting black humour, parodying the TAC's own repeated use of the courts to advance their drug-shilling agenda, and exposing Achmat's stupidity and ignorance, his dishonesty and hypocrisy, as it pleads the dismal facts with blistering sarcasm, on the way providing an informative introduction to what ARV drugs do to people, Achmat included. Turning a carving knife in his stomach as it does so. With a smile.
The best historical precedent in style and purpose is Daniel Defoe's
The Shortest-Way
with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church in 1702, convincingly advocating the extermination of his own party ('Crucify the Thieves!'), to ridicule
political and religious intolerance; but which he also found necessary to
explain
after his stupid opponents were taken in, enraged when they realised they had been mocked, and had Defoe
arrested, fined and pilloried for three days. A more immediately obvious satire is Jonathan Swift's
A Modest Proposal
for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or
Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick: his proposal in 1729 that the excess of Irish children be served on English dinner plates to alleviate
the meat shortage – to point up the cruelty of English colonial policy in Ireland.
Here's the original
A4 format
version (PDF 137 KB) printed out and physically filed
at the reception counter at The Hague.
It's been
translated
into Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, German, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.
Download (PDF, 777 KB)
This provocative
affidavit was filed in the Cape High Court in mid-2007, knocking the TAC and its ridiculous case to
pieces. And sending the TAC running for the hills: here's the
happy ending
(PDF, 207 KB) in March 2008, three days after
heads of argument
(PDF 16KB) were filed.
The affidavit was contrived to inform and answer, but
with a bang – as in the 'rupture defence' strategy of radical French
avocat
Jacques Vergés.
The affidavit in its original
A4 format
(PDF, 514 KB) is hyperlinked to its annexures.
'Just say yes, Mr President': Mbeki and AIDS
is my major work in progress,
my long delayed, unfinished 'symphony
for three orchestras', with which I've been busy for many years: a comprehensive
+1000-page history of the South African AIDS controversy
and an interrogation and deconstruction of its medical and ideological foundations.
The book
manuscript is described in a
prospectus
(PDF, 800 KB) that includes a review of all prior biographies and political histories and their failure to
get to grips with and explore Mbeki's thinking on AIDS. About half of it comprises a close analysis of how
and why Mark Gevisser fucked up his AIDS chapter in
Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred
even as Mbeki went out of his way to help him get it right.
'For very great is the number of the stupid'
– as Galileo observed – is a collection of public statements about Mbeki and AIDS to appear in the prefatory pages
of the book.
REVIEWS:
This book is a pit bull ... a tour de force ... a brilliant and searing polemic ... incandescent ... You write so well
An outstanding interdisciplinary study pivotal to understanding Mbeki's stance on AIDS. My respect for his integrity in the face of Western economic and ideological agendas has been deepened. One is reminded that all one knows is learned, but not necessarily true....
Absolutely breathtaking ... a gripping analysis of the ideological, religious, commercial and cultural foundations of one of the defining phenomena of our age, namely AIDS. ... [Brink is] one of the most interesting thinkers I have ever met
Absolutely breathtaking ... 'n aangrypende ontleding van die ideologiese, religieuse, kommersiële en kulturele onderbou van 'n definierende verskynsel van ons tyd, naamlik VIGS. ... [Brink is] een van die interessantste denkers wat ek nog ontmoet het
Anthony Brink provides not only a comprehensive chronicle of the turbulent history of AIDS in South Africa to date, but does so with precisely the scepticism such an undertaking demands. The result is a relentless dismantling of the credibility of the AIDS industry in South Africa and around the world: alarming AIDS statistics, the celebrated virtues of AIDS drugs, the reliability of AIDS tests, the supposed causal role of "HIV", even the unquestioned existence of the latter – all come under fire in a way that leaves the reader breathless. But Brink digs even deeper by showing why the scientific arguments (which he sets out masterfully) cannot ultimately decide the AIDS debate. The reason? An ideology presenting itself as "liberal", but in reality betraying a deeply rooted racism, according to which Africa cannot survive unless white people and their interests prevail. Brink is therefore not merely a scientific commentator, but also a social critic and political analyst of exceptional insight, writing in a style that will delight even the literary connoisseur. The book is packed with humour, yet at the same time is shocking and disturbing because it thoroughly slaughters sacred cows and equips more than a few AIDS saints with conspicuous horns. I cannot recommend Just say yes, Mr President highly enough. It is a worthy successor to his previous masterpiece, Debating AZT, which by comparison was little more than a warm-up. May this book receive the attention it deserves and provoke exactly the outrage it sets out to arouse.
Anthony Brink bied nie net 'n volledige kroniek van 'vigs' se bewoë geskiedenis in Suid-Afrika tot dusver nie, maar doen dit ook met die agterdog wat so 'n onderneming by uitstek vereis. Die resultaat is 'n meedoënlose aftakeling van die geloofwaardigheid van die vigs-industrie in Suid-Afrika en wêreldwyd: skrikwekkende vigs-statistieke, die besonge deugde van vigs-middels, die betroubaarheid van vigs-toetse, die veronderstelde oorsaaklike rol van 'MIV', selfs die vanselfsprekende bestaan van laasgenoemde – dit alles kom onder vuur op 'n manier wat die leser se asem wegslaan. Maar Brink grawe nog dieper deurdat hy aantoon hoekom die wetenskaplike argumente (wat hy meesterlik uiteensit) uiteindelik nie die deurslag in die vigsdebat kan gee nie. Die rede? 'n Ideologie wat sigself as 'liberaal' voordoen, maar in werklikheid 'n diepliggende rassisme verraai waarvolgens Afrika nie anders kan as om onder te gaan as witmense en hul belange nie die botoon voer nie. Brink speel dus nie net wetenskaplike nie, maar ook sosiale kritikus en politieke ontleder op 'n uiters skerpsinnige manier en in 'n styl wat ook vir die literêre fynproewer plesier verskaf. Die boek is propvol humor, maar terselfdertyd skokkend en ontstellend omdat dit heilige koeie behoorlik slag en 'n hele paar vigs-heiliges van opvallende horings voorsien. Ek kan Just say yes, Mr President nie sterk genoeg aanbeveel nie. Dit is 'n waardige opvolg op sy vorige meesterstuk, Debating AZT, wat in vergelyking hiermee nie veel meer as 'n oefenlopie is nie. Mag hierdie boek die aandag kry wat dit verdien en die verontwaardiging uitlok waarop dit uit is
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