Extract from the transcript of Padraig O'Malley's interview with then ANC Secretary General, Kgalema Motlanthe, August 22 2000
PADRAIG O'MALLEY: Talking about issues one thing struck me, and this is something that I have probably developed an obsession with, and that is with AIDS, HIV/AIDS. Last year when I was interviewing ministers and the like I would ask what in the next 15 years was the major challenge facing SA, and they would say crime, the economy, whatever. No-one said AIDS. Then I would say, "Why didn't you say AIDS? You're wearing a pin." Then they would say AIDS is related to this, that and the other and it's a challenge but there are many challenges we're facing.
My own view is that unless AIDS is the challenge, that unless you marshal all resources to beat this, that the rest is almost irrelevant. There will be no children at the schools, there will be no teachers, there will be no public servants and there will be no social and economic transformation. Yet even as I went through your presentation that had been prepared, the tactics and strategies, you have the five basic pillars, you've got the objectives, there's one section on AIDS and the AIDS programmes and it kind of says there's the President's Partnership in AIDS, HIV has been identified as a national concern, whereas to me the wording should perhaps have been that HIV/AIDS has been identified as the national concern and that everything else is subordinate to this because unless you get it under control you're going from apartheid to AIDS oblivion.
Why does the ANC as an organisation, as a government, not pay more attention, be seen to be more visibly putting this forward that this must be the priority of the national agenda?
KGALEMA MOTLANTHE: Well it can't be the priority. It is a priority and we have done everything in our power to bring awareness, highlight it. As you say, all of us on our jackets we've got the pin, because it is also the collapse of the immune system. You can't begin with AIDS. The human immune system collapses under certain conditions. Even in the past - people are undernourished and exposed to all kinds of hazards, their system becomes weaker and weaker and collapses.
Sometimes people just don't eat at all and the system collapses and once the immune system has collapsed opportunistic diseases find very low resistance and can actually kill that person. So in a way this one called AIDS doesn't kill. It is the opportunistic diseases that kill people because once your immune system has collapsed you contract flu like I did two weeks ago. It will be with you for ever, there is no waking up, there is no recovery. Tuberculosis as tuberculosis is curable, there is a cure for it, it can be cured. It is the totality of these opportunistic diseases when your immune system has collapsed that kills you.