with a confused leadership providing no able direction, frustration and alarm is growing at the rampant spread of aids throughout South Africa. And the announcement by five of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies offering to slash prices of hiv drugs in developing countries has done little to mitigate the suffering. Confounding matters is South African president Thabo Mbeki's vacillations on the issue.

The president, after casting doubts about the long-established theory that hiv causes aids, has finally accepted that the theory did indeed stand. Last year, Mbeki stunned health experts by questioning the safety of the first and most common anti- aids drug azt . But at a dinner hosted by us President Bill Clinton recently he denied the report. He has also discontinued azt to pregnant mothers and rape victims, citing safety and cost concerns. azt is known to supress transmission of hiv from pregnant mothers to babies. Among the numerous controversies created by him, he included dissident scientists on a panel of experts studying measures to counter the exploding health emergency that has claimed 11 million lives in sub-Saharan Africa.

The discredited American researchers