Genocidal duo's body count comes to light

According to a study published by Harvard University AIDS specialists the surplus deaths caused by the HIV denialist policies of former South African President Thabo Mbeki and his quack doctor and health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang stand at more than 350,000 lives lost. More than 350,000 impoverished South Africans lost their lives because of the genocidal policies Mbeki and Tshabala-Msimang enforced in the country. These policies, driven by the conviction that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, meant that even rape survivors were unable to access postexposure prophylaxis. That in a country were rape is endemic, and where the HIV prevalence stands at about 20 percent or thereabouts. I reviewed the moral implications of these policies here. Medical doctors were forced out of their public sector hospital jobs by ANC ministers, for no other reason than that they provided rape survivors with postexposure prophylaxis, in violation of the monstrous government policies Mbeki and his health prevbention side-kick implemented.

What I can't get my head around is that nobody in South Africa seems to think these days that it might be a good idea to hold both Mbeki and Tshalabala-Msimang personally accountable for these policies, and to prosecute them on genocide charges. Why do politicians seem to get away with murder (that's what their omission to act when they should amounts to)? Even in the USA these days a discussion has begun on whether the Bush administration officials responsible for war crimes (including the torture of enemy combatants) should be prosecuted. Not so in South Africa.

I can't help but wonder whether even black people have got used to the idea that their lives just are not worth enough to bother... How else could one possibly explain the South African people's inaction on this issue? Indeed, how else can one explain that someone with a proven track record in terms of maximising the number of black lives lost to ideological fanaticism remains the official representative of the AU in Zimbabwe. Mbeki, here too, happily goes over the dead bodies of an ever growing number of black people in order to support his fellow lunatic Robert Mugabe.

Irresponsible governments - accountability for acts and omissions

The South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala - Msimang and Treatment Action Campaign's Zackie Achmat have frequently crossed swords in the past. He was asked by a local paper whether he could ever be friends with her. Achmat replied "no", and explained: "Almost a million people have died and for that I don't think that I could ever establish a friendship with her."

Forget the question of whether or not anyone would want to be friends with such an egotistical, petty character as the South African Minister for Health Prevention and the country's similarly deluded President. There's a more interesting issue, and that issue is this. Consequentialist ethicists (among others) have made much of rejecting the acts and omissions doctrine. They claim, essentially, that all other things being equal, you are as responsible for the consequences of your actions as you are for the consequences of your omissions to act when you could have acted. I think that this makes perfectly sense.

Here then is an interesting challenge: Remember a mass murderer like Slobodan Milosevich, the Christian slaughterer or anything not Christian/Serbian during the civil wars in former Yugoslawia? Many people died as a direct consequences of his actions (read: policies). Well, if we really believe that the acts and omissions doctrine doesn't make much sense, we surely need some international court of justice that holds governments responsible for policies that omit to act when they could have acted to prevent significant harm to their citizens. Thabo Mbeki, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the ANC government are responsible for up to 1 million of preventable deaths in Southern Africa due to their refusal to provide medication to these people when they could have.

I am still flabbergasted that nobody in South Africa seems keen on holding these liberation politics apparatchicks responsible for the preventable deaths of more than a million poor Black South Africans. Just imagine such genocidal policies had been enacted by a white government. The world would have been up in arms, and quite rightly so. Surely, holding a Black run government to lower standards of performance, competence etc is in itself racist, isn't it?

... or am I missing something?