This is according to TAC general secretary Sipho Mthati, speaking after a remarkable week in which Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge pledged to work with AIDS organisations to fight HIV.

‘€œWhat we are calling for is leadership in the department of health on HIV/ AIDS,’€ said Mthati. ‘€œWhile it will be difficult for us to have confidence in the health minister, what will enable us to live with her as health minister is if she and government start to seriously address the problems of HIV and TB.

‘€œWe have raised the problem of the minister’€™s failure to lead on HIV/ AIDS with the Presidency. They need to deal with this problem, and if they do we will call off the campaign for the minister’€™s resignation.’€

Mlambo-Ngcuka has effectively staked her reputation on improving government’€™s approach to HIV/AIDS and the health ministry is going to be under immense pressure to shape up.

‘€œThe vibe we are getting is that the Presidency is taking control of the situation and will ensure that the health department operates differently,’€ said Mthati.

After a three-week absence due to an ill-defined illness, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang found on her return to work this week that the Presidency and civil society had forged a new partnership to address the virus.

The deputy president and the deputy health minister both addressed a two-day civil society meeting convened last weekend by the TAC, Tshabalala-Msimang’€™s nemesis. The minister was not invited.

This week, the structure of the revamped SA National AIDS Council (SANAC), chaired by the deputy president, was revealed.

Stakeholders envisage that health officials will have to be far more accountable to SANAC for progress being made to address the virus.

In the past three months, SANAC stakeholders have assumed control over the process of developing a new strategic plan for HIV/AIDS for 2007-2011. This was after the health department had failed to do so after the old plan came to an end last year.

SANAC’€™s draft plan stresses the need for proper monitoring and evaluation of government’€™s HIV/AIDS response ‘€“ something that was totally lacking in the 2000-2005 plan.

The new strategic plan is due to be launched in a few weeks’€™ time on AIDS Day, and is also expected to pin the health department to achieving specific targets in the treatment, care and prevention of HIV.

While Mthati said that there had been ‘€œa significant change in government’€™s language and tone’€ she cautioned that ‘€œin the end we will have to see how this translates into action’€.

‘€œWe have to believe that this is a real change because it would be unimaginable for government to want us to go back to the conflict and division on an issue that should have united all of us,’€ said Mthati.

Government’€™s commitment to addressing its past mistakes could be assessed immediately by the speed in which it reached patients on the waiting list for antiretrovirals, she added.

‘€œGovernment has said that there are 31 000 people on the waiting list. It could sort this out by the end of this year and that would be an immediate measure of its new commitment,’€ said Mthati.

The TAC believes that the immediate priorities are: a significant scale up people’€™s access to treatment, a mass prevention campaigns and sending out the message that gender-based violence is not acceptable, said Mthati.

The TAC and its allies have also called for the development of an operational plan that outlines definite steps government will be taking in health districts throughout the country to address treatment, care and prevention, and for ARV treatment to be decentralised from hospitals to primary healthcare clinics.

‘€œEverybody in government is tired of this conflict. It has become a moral issue for the ANC government. It can never justify what it has done in the past, but it now has an opportunity to atone,’€ added Mthati.