Sipho Mthathi,
general secretary of South Africa's AIDS activist group
Treatment Action Campaign, on Thursday rejected the
government's invitation to be part of the nation's
official delegation to the United Nations General
Assembly Special Session on AIDS in May. "I do not
feel that civil society has been adequately respected," said
Mthathi, who charged that the health ministry did not
invite enough activists to participate.
Last month, TAC
blasted health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for
refusing to grant it and its affiliated AIDS Law Project
credentials to attend the session as nongovernmental
organizations. The ministry said it did this because
of the organization's history of criticizing the
government at public meetings. In revisiting its decision,
the ministry invited Mthathi but not Zackie Achmat,
TAC's outspoken president.
Earlier this
year, TAC had charged that the government's official report
for the meeting was prepared without adequate activist input
and painted an unrealistically favorable picture of
the nation's AIDS epidemic.
"The entire
process for selecting and then announcing the delegation
has been unsatisfactory," Mthathi wrote in an open letter.
"For TAC to now attend within this delegation lends
respectability to a process that we feel has mostly
been unilateral and nontransparent." (AP)