Former South African President Nelson Mandela visited an Aids treatment project in the Khayelistha township outside Cape Town, close to his birthplace, last month. Wearing a T-shirt reading ‘HIV positive’, he called for more treatment initiatives and prevention programmes. “We have created the impression that we don’t care about the young people who are sick and dying,” he said: “This is war. All of us should stand on our feet and mobilise.”

photo: ap photo

Aids activists in South Africa have given their government an ultimatum to provide promised Aids drugs, or face a civil disobedience campaign this spring.
Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) spokesman Nathan Geffen said: “We will start a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience if the government has not adopted an HIV/Aids treatment plan that includes antiretroviral therapy by the end of February 2003.”

“This will include sit-ins, hunger strikes, the illegal importation of medicine and the illegal distribution of medicine.”