some strong comments from the site:
"I feel physically sick when I read the comments of this wanker’s followers oh his pathetic blog (
http://www.garethcliff.com/chronicles.php?articleid=700). Cliff has become a cult hero to disaffected racists who believe that the ANC and all Black people are incompetent - and that the country was ‘better run’ during Apartheid. I hope he is proud of that.
Tshabalala-Msimang presided over decisions I wholeheartedly disagree with, but there is a time and a place to discuss these issues. The event of her pa**ing, and on Reconciliation Day, is neither the time nor the place.
We should remind ourselves that we are not talking about Hitler. We are talking about someone who dedicated their life to the emancipation of her people from White oppression. Her bad decisions may be unforgivable but they cannot alone define her life.
I guess we shouldn’t really care what a self-obsessed reactionary like Cliff thinks about anything. What is more disturbing is what he represents, and how many people see him as some kind of ‘revolutionary’ who is ‘not scared to speak his mind’."
and another:
"When we look back on this time in our country, what will we remember? How people with people with opposing views were vilified and treated like monsters, how racism, fear and dogma thrived while hundreds of thousands of africans died from preventable diseases, their immune systems weakened by toxins and malnutrition, while those who tried to make us see that a holistic approach to health – of our environment and ourselves – while perhaps a more difficult path would ultimately save not just lives, but our planet as well, were hounded and dismissed as lunatics.
The former health minister was not someone who I would go to any lengths to defend at a personal level, we all have personality flaws. I was a health reporter when she was minister and I remain impressed at how she transformed our health system from one that served 8% of the population to one that now delivers primary health care to the majority of South Africans. Committed to change and never courting popularity, she fought for what she belived and took on some of the biggest threats to our health . It was under her leadership that smoking was banned in public places and huge effort put into fighting TB, the real cause of many of those deaths attributed to HIV.
I suspect history will be a lot kinder to the former president and his health minister than we have been and I also suspect that south africa will be full of people who will claim they never dismissed outright the claims of dissidents, that they were never part of the hysterical adherence to a flawed theory that makes money for the pharmaceutical industry, that they never believed all that bullshit about HIV….because there are a number of sober and rational people and that number grows all the time, who have taken time to look at the HIV causes Aids theory (until it is proved, it remains a theory and should – as such - be vigorously examined) and concluded that we are being fed a load of bullshit.
The personal attacks on Aids dissidents points to insecurity and that is understandable, because I would be insecure defending a theory that is flawed, that just doesn’t make sense and has never been proved. What do we have to lose by being open to other theories and views? Why is the view that poverty, malnutrition and exposure to toxic chemicals causes immune system failure so threatening? Or do we need a villain to blame so that we don’t have to share the poverty or change the way we live, so that we can continue our destructive greedy lives comforted by the fact that the poverty of the majority ensures that whatever happens to us, we will get the best care money can buy.
Every day I become more appalled at how white south africans hide their ingrained racism behind other issues, how suddenly they care about the state of schools in townships and the quality of life for the majority, how the present government is seen as demonically causing all the social ills apartheid gave us…I am even more appalled that the spirit of Ubuntu has not taken hold, that opposing views are not given time of day but there’s instead an unyielding hysteria that accompanies discussion of most public issues, and underlying this is a deeply rooted fear. Until we change, until we all open up, we will continue to live in the shadow of fear and there are no chemicals or drugs in the world that can save us."
