bers of the tiny minority of specialists who still disputed the Widely ac-
cepted theory that HIVcauses AIDS.1 1l In response, 500 scholars publicly
reaffirmed the HIVtheory, and at the thirteenth international conference
on AIDS,which was held in Durban in July 2000, Mbeki drew much criti-
cism for creating confusion in the minds of South Africans and distracting
the health services from addressing the epidemic.P:'
Mbeki devoted much time and energy to foreign affairs-critics
said
too much, in light of the domestic situation. He championed democracy
and the rule of law, but, with his experience in dealing with members of
the National party in the apartheid era, he preferred quiet diplomacy to
public denunciation of African despots. He traveled frequently and gained
recognition as an "effectivespokesman not only for South Africa but also
for all of sub-Saharan Africa and for developing countries everywhere, as
he campaigned for debt relief, foreign investment, poverty reduction, and
reform of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the
United Nations Security Council. He worked hard to create rapport with
African governments, notably the new civilian government of Nigeria; he
undertook to send a South African contingent to take part in a planned