Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Forward

Abstract

South Africans are living in an all too visible killing field. If UNAIDS statistics are to be believed, they are dying of AIDS at a rate of around 1,000 people every day — that is currently the equivalent of more than one 11 September 2001 attack on South Africans every three days, all year — and this number is steadily increasing. Yet the South African government has not declared AIDS a national emergency, and — to take the analogy even further — for some years now President Mbeki has been casting doubt on the existence of the terrorist aeroplanes themselves. More than ten years into the South African democratic political dispensation, the government is still prevaricating on the rollout of ARVs to PWAs, despite more than one court action ordering the state to provide these drugs as a basic human right.