S. Africas advances jeopardized by AIDS.

In South Africa one in five in a population of 41 million are infected with HIV. Largely isolated to white gay men when it first appeared in the early 1980s the virus by 1990 had begun infecting primarily black heterosexuals. Initially the African National Congress (ANC) reacted by approaching AIDS with a mixture of denial resentment and tentativeness. By the end of the apartheid regime in 1993 however ANC devised an AIDS plan for the new government worth $64 million for education programs mass media campaigns free condoms and support programs for HIV patients. Angering civil rights advocates Prime Minister Nkosazana Zuma proposed requiring people with HIV to make their status public in order to increase peoples awareness about the virus. In 1997 Zuma appealed for funding and approval of Virodene P058 a locally-researched drug that was later discredited as an effective treatment and found to contain an industrial solvent. It is noted that still raw from years of racism under apartheid ANC leaders may be acting out of a desire to form an African response not a Western response to the epidemic.