Lennox: Africa's Aids crisis 'similar to horror of Nazi concentration camps'

ANNIE Lennox, the Scots-born rock star, has launched an outspoken attack on the South African government over its response to the HIV/Aids pandemic in southern Africa, a crisis she compared to the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War.

She also described the South African government's approach to the crisis as a "debacle" and the Catholic Church's stance as unhelpful.

The 53-year-old musician, who has sold 80 million records globally, said she was shocked by the scale of the HIV/Aids crisis when she worked on a project in South Africa and said she would do everything she could to raise awareness of the issue.

According to the latest UN figures, 30 per cent of pregnant women in South Africa have HIV/Aids, a figure which rises to 40 per cent in Swaziland. Many families are already fatherless, having lost the main bread-winners because they have walked out or died, while a large number are now becoming motherless as well due to HIV/Aids, leaving thousands of Aids orphans.

Lennox is due to appear at the Festival of Politics at the Scottish Parliament next month to highlight the fight against HIV/Aids.

In an interview with The Scotsman, which is a media partner in the event, she explained why she was so determined to help.

Echoing the stance of Nelson Mandela, she said the issue of HIV/Aids in southern Africa was a "question of human rights".

She said: "When it comes to the pandemic, it is on such a scale that unless you have a direct experience and have visited the country and seen for yourself, it's almost beyond imagination.

"When I think about the Second World War and the horror of the concentration camps, and after people realised what was going on and said, 'This is a horror, how could human beings do this?' and I saw this pandemic and thought, it's a similar thing in a way."

She said the solution had to be found in the way society behaved, as sufferers were often women and children. "You are looking at women's rights, protection from rape and domestic violence and abuse, you are looking at education because of the very nature of this disease.

"A sexually transmitted disease has a great deal of stigma and people respond to it very differently from another disease carried in a different way and it runs right the way through society, there are no boundaries with this disease.

"People will tend to deny someone is dying of it in their immediate family, they will be afraid to acknowledge it, all the way through from government ministers themselves."

And, on the attitude of the South African government – which has been criticised for playing down the extent of the crisis and refusing to acknowledge the causes and possible treatments – Lennox said: "It's been a debacle how (South Africa's president, Thabo] Mbeki has, over the last decade, taken a very eccentric stance."

She added that the Catholic Church's opposition to the use of condoms had "not been helpful" particularly with the huge number of rapes in southern Africa.

The musician said she was passionate over the issue and wanted to act as a "conduit" to inform people and governments about what was really going on.

Last month Lennox, in an exclusive interview with The Scotsman, said she supported Scottish independence and hoped the nation could set an example to the world on environmental issues.