CHAPTER 10

We have already referred to the need to get accurate information about the incidence of disease and death in our country. Everyday, we are fed with "information" that large numbers of people are dying from AIDS, with many anecdotes being told.

On November 22, 2001, the US periodical, "Rolling Stone", published an article by the South African writer and journalist, Rian Malan.

There are many things that Malan says in this article that, undoubtedly, will have enraged the omnipotent apparatus.

Referring to the HIV-tests we have already dealt with, Malan says that in the US each person is subjected to a number of tests. He says:

" In other words, we're talking six tests in all, doubly confirmed. Such a protocol is probably foolproof.In the annual pregnancy-clinic surveys on which South Africa's terrifying AIDS statistics are based, the protocol is one ELISA only, unconfirmed by anything. In America, one ELISA means almost nothing. 'Persons are positive only when they are repeatedly reactive by ELISA and confirmed by Western Blot,' says the CDC." (Our emphases).

Malan continues:

" My education in the complexities of the ELISA test started when I came across an article in a scientific journal published last year. It told a story that began in 1994, when researchers ran HIV tests on 184 high-risk subjects in a South African mining camp. Twenty-one of the subjects came up positive or borderline positive on at least one ELISA. But the results were confusing. A locally manufactured test said two subjects were positive. A British test indicated seven, but different people in almost every case. A French test declared fourteen were infected.

" It seemed something was confounding the tests, and the prime suspect was plasmodium falciparum, one of the parasites that causes malaria. Of the twenty-one subjects who tested positive, sixteen had had recent malaria infections and huge levels of antibody in their veins. The researchers tried an experiment: They formulated a preparation that absorbed the malaria antibodies, treated the blood samples with it, then retested them. Eighty per cent of the suspected HIV infections disappeared." (Our emphasis).

Malan reports that he asked a member of a team of demographers who had studied African mortality statistics:

" Do you accept the high levels of HIV infection being reported by Geneva (UN AIDS)?" To which the demographer replied:

" I don't have much faith. It's essentially a modelling exercise, and the exercise has always seemed to have a political dimension." (Our emphasis).

Earlier is his article, Malan says:

" Geneva's computer models suggested that AIDS deaths here (in South Africa) had tripled in three years, surging from 80,000 odd in 1996 to 250,000 in 1999. But no such rise was discernible in total registered deaths, which went from 294,703 to 343,535 within roughly the same period. The discrepancy was so large that I wrote to Statistics SA - the nation's census bureau - and to the Medical Research Council - a governmental body - to make absolutely sure I had understood these numbers correctly. Both parties confirmed that I had, and at that exact moment, my story was in trouble. Geneva's figures reflected catastrophe. Pretoria's did not. Between these extremes lay a gray area populated by local experts such as Stephen Kramer, manager of insurance giant Metropolitan's AIDS Research Unit, whose own computer model shows AIDS deaths at about one-third Geneva's estimates. But so what? South African actuaries don't get a say in this debate. The figures you see in your newspapers !
come from Geneva. The WHO takes pains to label these numbers estimates only, but still, these are the estimates we all accept as the truth." (Our emphasis).

(NB: At least part of this increase in the mortality figures is due to the fact that national statistics are now capturing data from those sections of the majority African population that had previously been excluded, because of the apartheid system. The apparent absolute increase may therefore not reflect an actual relative increase of mortality among our population, and almost certainly does not.)

Malan then says:

" Since (I assumed that) it was indeed true that very large numbers of South Africans were dying, then the nation's coffin makers had to be laboring hard to keep pace with growing demand.

" So I called the real-wood firms, three industrialists who manufactured coffins on an assembly live for the national market.

" 'It's quiet', said Kurt Lammerding of GNG Pine Products. 'We aren't feeling anything at all.' His competitors concurred - business was dead, so to speak.

" 'It's a fact,' said Mr A.B. Schwegman of B&A Coffins. 'If you go on what you read in the newspapers, we should be overwhelmed, but there's nothing. So what's going on? You tell me.'

" I couldn't, although I suspected it might have something to do with race. Since the downfall of apartheid in 1994, illegal backyard funeral parlors have mushroomed in the black townships, and my sources couldn't discount the possibility that these outfits were scoring their coffins from the underground economy. So I called a black-owned firm, Mmabatho Coffins, but it had gone out of business, along with others I tried calling.(In downtown Johannesburg) Penny's place was locked up and deserted. Inside I saw unsold coffins stacked ceiling-high, and a forlorn CLOSED sign hung on a wire."

Inevitably, the omnipotent apparatus will kill Rian Malan's article by ensuring that as many people as possible do not know that it was ever written and published. Among other things, this will help this apparatus to sustain the fiction of catastrophic figures of "HIV infection" in our country.

The sustenance of these figures, which derive from drastically wrong testing practice even in terms of the "orthodox" paradigm and process, is important because it creates a market for the sale of anti-retroviral drugs. In this context, findings such as those made by Rian Malan, that after the necessary scientific work was done, "eighty per cent of the suspected HIV infections disappeared", are totally unacceptable.

Having sounded thunderous drums about millions of our people being "infected by HIV", imagine what would happen to the domestic and global army that lives off this "apocalypse", if suddenly it would be said that eighty per cent of the suspected HIV infections are a result of pure imagination or defective medical processes!

It seems obvious that the omnipotent apparatus will never allow such an outcome, in its own interest. Of no consequence to the omnipotent apparatus in this regard is the actual health condition of our people.

The story will therefore continue to be told, with no respect whatsoever for the truth, that, as a people, we are destined to perish as a result of an overpowering "HIV infection" of millions of our people.

We will not, at this stage, ask the questions to which the omnipotent apparatus is opposed. Having conducted some research, rather than rely on anecdotes told as a result of "perceptions", Rian Malan could not find the catastrophic deaths regularly reported from Geneva.

He was also able to establish that Geneva produces these figures with no reference whatsoever to the actual record of deaths, as reflected in the reports contained in the detailed Population Register kept by the Department of Home Affairs.

He will, of course, have noticed that since he spoke to them, the "governmental body", the Medical Research Council, has changed its tune on the matter of our mortality statistics. To do this, without notifying anybody, it broke away from a committee of government bodies charged with the task of studying the Home Affairs mortality figures and preparing a report on this matter.

Having raised money, partly from an international pharmaceutical company, with no authorisation by anybody in government, it proceeded to produce its own profile and projections of mortality in our country. These were as catastrophic as those regularly peddled by Geneva.

For its efforts, it received the resounding acclaim of the omnipotent apparatus. Obviously, it is in the interest of the omnipotent apparatus that the "truth" as told by Geneva should prevail, rather than the truth reflected in our national Population Register. The question is - why is the telling of damaging falsehoods about our country so important to the omnipotent apparatus!

Undoubtedly, as he began his inquiry, Rian Malan would have read the many statements that are made about the catastrophic impact of HIV-AIDS on our industry and economy. Anglo American plc is one of South Africa's major corporations, employing many people in South and Southern Africa and elsewhere in the world.

The corporation has been implementing its own programmes to respond to the AIDS challenge. It began these programmes in Zimbabwe, which it says is "six years ahead of South Africa in terms of HIV/AIDS impact."

In the journal "Optima" (Vol 46 No 1, July 2000) it reported:

" The combined death and early-retirement rate (in Zimbabwe) equated to 25.3 per 1,000, or 'only' 2.5% - a manageable figure.

" In the case of the Anglo American group.the maximum expected annual staff loss because of AIDS is not likely to be higher than 5%. You have to compare that level, and the associated replacement costs, with the natural attrition rate of workers leaving for whatever other reasons. In economic boom years we can lose more than 15% of certain skilled workers through job-hopping for better pay and prospects."

We can cite more examples from the mining industry that confirm the story told by Anglo-American plc. The question that arises from all this is - whence do the stories emanate that project a future economic crisis caused by death from AIDS among our economically active population!

The same question should be posed with regard to the similarly projected catastrophe with regard to the public service.

The story we have told so far shows unequivocally that, at best, the "scientific" story that is told about the "HIV/AIDS pandemic" in our country, is highly tendentious.

The more any open-minded person probes it, as Rian Malan did, the more will this person find that what this "science" states as incontrovertible truths throws up more questions than it answers.

The problem with all this is that, here, we are dealing with matters of life and death. The issues we are discussing have to do with the lives of millions of people. This does not allow for any recklessness or anything other than a rigorous understanding of all the matters we have raised, and others besides.

It does not permit of submission to a herd-instinct, to which many of us are so prone. Because we are dealing here with science and facts, we cannot allow the truth to be defeated by perceptions, faith and fear of the omnipotent apparatus.

In this situation, we have to accept that the search for the truth will be denounced and punished by the omnipotent apparatus as unacceptable non-conformity.

The question that faces any honest person, having been exposed to the reality that there are many outstanding questions that require scientific answers, is whether it is possible both to be conformist and retain one's sense of personal integrity! Is it possible for us to be conformist and actually defeat the AIDS threat that faces our people!

The "scientific proofs" adduced to convince us about the various facets of the HIV/AIDS question rest on very tenuous grounds. Yet, the reality is that the majority of our people and the rest of the world, including our Continent, believe that these "proofs" are indeed scientific proofs.

The question arises naturally - why this groundswell of belief and faith!