President Mbeki - burying his head in sand?

Last week President Bush, when hard pressed to explain the lack of pragmatic leadership in Iraq, posed this question.

"Now, where’s Mandela?” Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas." (President Bush).

Of course Mandela, the most virtuous pragmatist out of Africa, still lives. It is his successor’s lack of pragmatism that validates belief in the death of pragmatic leadership in the world.
Mbeki refuses to acknowledge the decimating impact of HIV/AIDS on poor South Africans. Much further, he prefers to deal with Mugabe, with his head buried in sand.

If Mbeki really cared about Aids, he’d do more than recall defective condoms, says A.H Smyth
South Africa's government is recalling 20m condoms and prosecuting their manufacturer - Latex Surgical Products - after a Bureau of Standards (SABS) official was accused of taking bribes in exchange for approving sub-standard products.
With 1,000 Aids-related deaths per day and a national infection rate of more than 20 per cent, the recall and the prosecution are commendable…….But the government's laudably prompt response will doubtless be used to mask bigger, political problems in South Africa's embattled health service. The corruption of a middling official endangers a relatively limited number of lives; the ANC's persistent refusal to acknowledge the scale of the Aids crisis threatens the entire nation. (The First Post).

And the First Post further speculates, that Mbeki may have his own personal reason for dealing with Mugabe with kid gloves…

How long will it be before South Africa produces its own home-grown Robert Mugabe? Only so long as the Almighty spares Nelson Mandela, since it is his miraculous influence that has stopped such an inevitable calamity already happening. (The First Post)