SOUTH AFRICA: The former South African president, Mr Nelson Mandela, has sharply criticised the administration of his successor, President Thabo Mbeki, for its failure to recognise AIDS as a threat that is more menacing to South Africa's welfare than all previous wars and natural disasters.
While he avoids mentioning Mr Mbeki by name, there is no doubt his criticism is aimed at his successor, in part because of his scathing rejection of one of the hallmarks of the Mbeki administration on HIV-AIDS: its inclination to argue about the cause of the dreaded illness "when people are dying".
In an interview with the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times yesterday, Mr Mandela describes the onslaught of the disease on South Africa as "a war" that has cost more lives than all past conflicts, including, by implication, that 30-year guerrilla war fought by the African National Congress to overthrow white rule.
Mr Mandela's discomfort at finding himself in a position where he is criticising his successor is manifest in his explanation that he had only voiced his criticism publicly when he had exhausted all avenues within the ANC to reach an understanding with its current leadership on the HIV-AIDS threat.
His divergence from the official ANC line - which includes reluctance to provide anti-retroviral drugs to HIV-positive pregnant women on a large scale in state hospitals to prevent mother-to-child transference of the disease - is a sequel to a speech he made 10 days ago, on the eve of Mr Mbeki's state of the nation address to Parliament.
Two key points in Mr Mandela's speech include his categorical statement that prevention of mother-to-child transmission was "beyond argument and doubt" and his strongly articulated regret that debate about the plague continued to "rage on" and to detract attention away from the "core concern" of acting decisively to check it.
That speech, in turn, is the sequel to a message from Mr Mandela on the ANC's 90th anniversary on January 8th, in which he noted, in an apparent reference to Mr Mbeki's policy on AIDS, that some of the public criticisms in the national interest deserved to be "taken seriously".
Mr Mandela, who prides himself on his corporate loyalty to ANC's "collective leadership", was careful in his comments to the Sunday Times to balance his criticism with praise for Mr Mbeki's leadership.