As we head into elections, the ANC boasts about successes in the fight against AIDS and South Africa's large antiretroviral treatment programme.
On the other hand, the opposition Democratic Alliance runs an advertisement that says under President Thabo Mbeki we saw progress, but now that progress is being reversed.
Both parties are being selective with the facts.
This week we have published two articles -- here and here -- on how South Africans are dying. The good news is that we are living longer. Health is improving. The statistics show that there has been a rapid rise in life-expectancy, a vital measure of a country's health.
Over two and a half million South Africans have died of AIDS according to best current estimates. Even the best run, best-intentioned response to the epidemic could not have prevented most of these deaths. Nevertheless, several hundred thousand deaths at least could have been avoided, maybe more than a million.
During his rule, Mbeki consciously defied the science of HIV and blocked the rollout, first of mother-to-child transmission prevention, and then of antiretroviral treatment, for people with HIV in the public sector. It was only after successful court action that drugs were provided to prevent mother-to-child transmission. It was only because of persistent protests culminating in the Treatment Action Campaign's civil disobedience campaign of 2003 that Mbeki's government relented -in fact his Cabinet rebelled against him- and treatment began to be made widely available in public health facilities.