A South African High Court judge, Judge Edwin Cameron, was yesterday given a standing ovation at the International AIDS conference in Durban after publicly identifying himself as "an African living with AIDS" and attacking pharmaceutical companies for failing to make retroviral drugs available at affordable prices to the poor in developing countries.
The softly spoken but eloquent judge linked his assault on the major drug companies with criticism of President Thabo Mbeki for his "flirtation" with dissident scientists who refuse to accept that AIDS is causes by the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus or HIV. A self-confessed homosexual, Judge Cameron represented conscientious objectors when they were prosecuted under South Africa's white minority for refusing to defend the apartheid state against ANC guerrillas.
"I am an African," the fair-skinned Judge Cameron declared. "I am living with AIDS. I therefore count as one amongst the forbidding statistics of AIDS in Africa."
Developing his attack on the major Western-based pharmaceutical companies, Judge Cameron said: "Amidst the poverty of Africa, I stand before you because I am able to purchase health and vigour. To me it seems an iniquity of very considerable proportions that, simply because of relative affluence, I should remain fit and healthy when illness and death beset millions."
Noting that he could afford medication costs of $400 a month in a continent where 290 millions African "live on less than one dollar a day", Judge Cameron said: "I am here because I can pay for life itself".
Of South Africa's President - who in his opening address to the conference identified extreme poverty, not AIDS, as the biggest killer and who did not acknowledge that AIDS was caused by HIV - Judge Cameron told the plenary session that Mr Mbeki had caused disbelief and confusion.
"In our national struggle to come to grips with the epidemic, perhaps the most intractably puzzling episode has been our President's flirtation with those who, in the face of all reason and evidence, have sought to dispute the aetiology of AIDS," Judge Cameron said. "It has created an air of unbelief among scientists, confusion among those at risk of HIV and consternation amongst AIDS workers."
Mr Phil Wilson of the African-American Aids Initiative was more fortnight: "The house is on fire and Mbeki is sitting around trying to decide whether it was started by a light or a match".
The conference chairman, South Africa's Prof Hoosen Coovaida, said: "What I'm sensing from people is absolute disappointment . . . Many people believed the President would use the occasion to try and quell some of the disquiet around government's position."
Representatives of major drug companies found themselves under fierce attack for not making life-saving drugs available to the poor at cheaper prices, for in Judge Cameron's words - placing the "corporate wealth of shareholders" ahead of the plight of the 30 million people in resource-poor countries who face death from AIDS unless medical care and treatment is made accessible to them.
Neither they nor the UN AIDS representative were able to persuade the activists that a new deal was imminent. The cry of the activists was for the door to be opened to generic companies to compete against the established pharmaceutical giants and force them to lower their prices.
Those pushing for life-saving drugs to be made more accessible to AIDS sufferers in the developing world were supported by President Jacques Chirac of France. In a message delivered on his behalf, Mr Chirac sharply criticised what he labelled the "two speed" approach to the AIDS crisis, which placed expensive drugs beyond the reach of the most badly hit regions in Africa and Asia.
"Where 90 per cent of the people infected with HIV live in the developing world, it would be entirely unacceptable to accept a two-speed epidemic," Mr Chirac said. "We have to do everything possible to ensure that the new treatment be made available to those most in need of it".