His high profile meant he had access to antiretrovirals, and he started taking indinavir/3TC/AZT in December 1997.
But at Geneva he came across the Aids dissidents. "I was walking
into the conference hall and met these people who were hunger-striking
to support the view that HIV did not exist, that it was all a conspiracy
by the western scientists and drug companies."
Others didn't find them credible. Why was Zulu drawn to their ideas?
"I was already looking for a way out, something that meant I wasn't
inevitably going to die. So here were these people saying, 'It's all been
this vast mistake. It's not what causes Aids.' Looking back, I think it
was about wishing Aids away."
By the time of the Durban Aids Conference in 2000, he was staying in a
house with a group of people viscerally opposed to the Aids treatment
that others were thronging the streets to demand. It must have been strange,
to say the least, to see demonstrators with placards saying ONE DISSIDENT,
ONE BULLET and knowing they were aimed at people like Zulu himself.
Head girl of the dissident household was Christine Maggiore, author of
What if Everything you Thought you Knew about Aids was Wrong? Zulu still
has a lot of time for the charismatic Maggiore, who has got rock stars
such as the Foo Fighters to support her cause.
Zulu's dissidence became entrenched by being invited by President Thabo
Mbeki to sit on his Aids Panel. Criticised by all treatment activists
and most scientists as a delaying tactic at best, and as sending South
Africa into a midnight of denial at worst, Zulu's interpretation is that
the proud and private Mbeki was determined to
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make up his own mind on Aids.
