The Former South African president, Mr Nelson Mandela, yesterday praised his successor, Mr Thabo Mbeki, as "a man of great intellect" and called for an end to the squabble over the cause of AIDS in which Mr Mbeki has become embroiled.
In a carefully crafted speech to mark the closing of the 13th international AIDS conference, Mr Mandela strove to pacify belligerents on both sides while fulfilling the role he has played as an Mbeki loyalist ever since he vacated the presidency in June last year.
To applause from delegates across the globe, Mr Mandela said: "We have to rise above our differences and combine our efforts to save our people. History will judge us harshly if we fail to do so now, right now."
South Africa's elder statesman echoed a central theme of the five-day conference: that humankind faces an unparalleled crisis and that the crisis is most acute in the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa.
"AIDS today in Africa is claiming more lives than the sum total of all wars, famines and floods, and the ravages of such diseases as malaria," he said.
As if to give impetus to his warning, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union yesterday endorsed an earlier call by the UN Children's Funds - one of the international organisations Mr Mbeki has indirectly accused of disseminating "hysterical estimates" of HIV prevalence in South Africa - for a war of liberation against AIDS.
Mr Mandela seemed to give similar credence to the sombre figures emanating from organisations such as UNAIDS and the UN Children's Fund when he said: "We were shocked to learn that within South Africa one in two, that is half, of our young people will die of AIDS." Repeating what has virtually become the mantra of the vast majority of delegates, Mr Mandela listed the steps which need to be taken urgently to combat the epidemic, all of which rest, directly or indirectly, on the assumption that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus.
That assumption is not shared, however, by dissident scientists, some of whom serve on Mr Mbeki's advisory panel on AIDS.
Mr Mandela commended Uganda and Senegal - two African countries with far fewer resources than South Africa - as well as Thailand for the success of their vigorous (but simple) campaigns to contain the AIDS plague.