Debating AZT: Mbeki and the AIDS drug controversy
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.
An early manuscript of the book, then-subtitled 'Question of safety and utility', sent up to the Minister of Health in May 1999 and read by President Thabo Mbeki a couple of months later, detonated the AIDS controversy in South Africa when on 28 October 1999 he ordered an enquiry into the safety of the drug, and in short order turned his attention from the touted medicine to the touted disease and finally to its touted cause.
A leaflet Why do President Mbeki and Dr Tshabalala-Msimang warn against the use of ARV drugs like AZT? (PDF) 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 translation
Humour 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 – strongly reminds me 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”
The trouble with nevirapine
The trouble with nevirapine was published in paperback in September 2008 and sold at Clarke's Bookshop in Cape Town. It's outlined on the back cover.
Robert Kennedy Jnr. cited it eight times as his source for the nevirapine chapter of his #1 bestseller in 2021 (1.4 million copies sold by August 2026), 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
Lying and Thieving: The fraudulent scholarship of Ronald Suresh Roberts
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 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.
And after reading Lying and Thieving shortly after its publication in November 2007 (in PDF free online and in paperback sold by Clarke's Bookshop in Cape Town), both the publisher and editor of Fit to Govern agreed: STE Publishers cancelled the second impression then about to go to press, and the English historian and journalist James Sanders PhD repudiated the book he'd just edited as:
the most serious case of plagiarism and literary fraud in South African literary history
Over lunch with Brink in Cape Town, Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic marvelled at Lying and Thieving's,
amazing detail!
And exclaimed:
Everyone in Joburg's read it!
The book was a sensation in all the newspapers, starting with no less than four (4) separate articles about it in the same edition of the Sunday Times after it was released, plus a prominent flag at the top of Page 2 calling attention to the scandal.
Speaking about his biography Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred in Sea Point, Cape Town, on 20 May 2008, Mark Gevisser reported that Mbeki had written to him after his biography came out specifically to confirm that Gevisser had been right to describe him as an AIDS dissident, adding that if he'd just look at the evidence he'd be one too.
That is, concerned to correct the record, Mbeki expressly repudiated Roberts's lie told at the start of the first of his two AIDS chapters in Fit to Govern, published in June 2007, a few months before Gevisser's Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred released in November: '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
It discusses Gevisser's report in his November 2007 biography (released just after Lying and Thieving was, earlier in the same month) that after Roberts published Fit to Govern in June, Mbeki responded to it by giving Gevisser a hardcopy of his much expanded Castro Hlongwane essay. (Thanks to Gevisser for emailing Brink a scanned copy.) In that essay, originally drawn for discussion by the ANC NEC at its meeting in April 2002, Mbeki unambiguously set out his actual dissentient position in the AIDS controversy, and made absolutely clear that Roberts's claim in his June 2007 book that Mbeki was with the believers was false.
Quite the contrary, as Gevisser correctly stated in his book: 'There is no question as to the message Thabo Mbeki was delivering to me along with this document: he was now, as he had been since 1999, an Aids dissident.'
The November 2008 reprint of Lying and Thieving included an Endnote with five updates.
The footnotes to Lying and Thieving are online for download.
The book is summed up in Brink's letter to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Birds of a Feather (PDF), tracing the many unpleasant parallels between the Dershowitz/Finkelstein and Roberts/Brink affairs:
Fine letter and very appropriate
Thanks ... A thumbs up from Chomsky is the best way to start the day
Introducing AZT: 'A World of Antiretroviral Experience'
Introducing AZT is a sequel to Debating AZT and includes research findings reported subsequently.
The book has no author narrative, and lets the drug's champions and critics contend for and against the drug themselves.
Publication of the manuscript in paperback was by delayed by distracting circumstances, and the completed book didn't make it to print.
Inventing AZT (PDF) in the appendices reports the scoop story related by the scientist who first synthesized the drug, telling how he invented it as a cell poison and how he changed his mind about its use during pregnancy after reading the foetal toxicity literature reviewed in Debating AZT.
Licensing AZT (PDF) recounts the grossly fraudulent manner in which the drug was approved by the American Food and Drug Administration.
Poisoning our Children: AZT in pregnancy
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), 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), both included in the appendices.
An 8-page leaflet Why do Zackie Achmat, Nathan Geffen and Mark Heywood want pregnant African women and their newborn babies given AZT? What AZT does to unborn and newly born children (PDF) provides essential information about this horror.
Review
Clearly your knowledge-base in this subject extends far beyond ours
RUDE LETTERS
The back cover will tell you what RUDE LETTERS is all about: 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, maybe not so foolish. Included are:
A letter (PDF) to Constitutional Law expert Professor Pierre de Vos at the University of the Western Cape; a letter (PDF) 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); a letter (PDF) to South African National Blood Services CEO Professor Anthon Heyns; a letter (PDF) to Dr Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV/AIDS Clinicians Society; some questions (PDF) 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) about it to Mail & Guardian owner Trevor Ncube; a letter to Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School (PDF); a letter to Litsa Delli, television producer, MEGA-TV, Athens, Greece (PDF) (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).
An unrealised book project: cover designed, ISBN number obtained, but interrupted and not published in paperback.
Draft Bill of Indictment against Zackie Achmat on a Charge of Genocide in the International Criminal Court at The Hague
In January 2007, this criminal complaint against Treatment Action Campaign leader Zackie Achmat was physically delivered to the ICC's Chief Prosecutor, and formally acknowledged the same month.
Reviews
Political journalist Terry Michael in Washington found it:
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 angrily complained that in drawing and filing it I'd:
gone too far
– 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 changed his mind soon afterwards and became a friend.)
The Cape Argus billed it purse-lipped on street-poles as:
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
London Guardian medical journalist Dr Ben Goldacre scowled in an editorial on 13 September 2008 that the complaint went to:
the heights of surreality
And described it in his regular column in that paper a week later 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
Goldacre frothed some more in the June 2009 edition of WIRED:
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
Also missing the irony, a German friend thought it:
sadistic
On the other hand, an African fan said he'd read bits out to his mates and had them all rolling about laughing. As did a Dutch guy; but then it's been said that the Dutch have 'an endless appetite for venom served with a wink'.
So was it serious? Was it a joke? Was 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. Like the TAC's Mark Heywood did, moaning about the complaint on the radio, you may conclude that I wanted his pal Achmat
tortured
Or, being a brighter sort of person, you may read the complaint as a parody of a formal criminal arraignment — a satirical attack on Western political show trials generally — set in high legal language, but cut with mounting black humour, parodying the TAC's own repeated abuse 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, including and especially to Achmat himself. 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 gulled 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.
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), printed out and physically filed at the ICC's front reception counter at The Hague in The Netherlands.
It's been translated into Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.
Treatment Action Campaign and South African Medical Association v Anthony Brink, Treatment Information Group, and Others: Answering Affidavit
This provocative answering 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) in March 2008, three days after heads of argument (PDF) 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) is hyperlinked to its annexures.
'Just say yes, Mr President': Mbeki and AIDS
'Just say yes, Mr President': Mbeki and AIDS is my major work in progress, my long delayed, substantially complete but 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 is outlined by its back-cover blurb (PDF), and is more fully described in a prospectus (PDF). This 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 screwed 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 correctly 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....
English translation
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
English translation
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