Stephen Lewis (picture to the left), a left-liberal Canadian AIDS activist, and currently the UN special envoy to AIDS, is a good man. A good man simply by virtue of the fact that the South African government wanted him removed for his trenchant criticisms of its genozidal policies on AIDS. The country's health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is these days widely referred to as DR Beetroot due to her continuing insistence that people with HIV/AIDS should take to African remedies such as beet root, garlic and other goodies instead of anti-retroviral medicines.
In any case, Lewis, in a clear sign of succumbing to that sometimes dreadful illness of political correctness suggested in his parting speech to the World AIDS Congress (a large inconsequential talkfest attracting in excess of 10,000 AIDS activists, reporters and a few scientists), suggested that the next AIDS special envoy on AIDS should be a black woman.
Seeing that blackness and biological gender seem to be his only selection criteria, one wonders whether Manto is going to throw her hat in the ring, seeing that at home there is a growing campaign of civil disobedience by people with HIV/AIDS against her continuing tenure.
