CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AFP) – South African police yesterday arrested 44 activists from the country’s main AIDS lobby group for staging a protest over what they see as a slow response to the pandemic from controversial Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

“Arrest Manto!” protesters chanted as their peers, including Nobel prize nominee Zackie Achmat, were bundled into a police van outside a government building in Cape Town where they were protesting.

The members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) accuse the minister of dragging her feet on providing anti-retroviral drugs to HIV-positive people in South Africa.

“Rather than helping, she is obfuscating the issues and confusing people,” said TAC spokesman Ralph Berold of the minister, who advocates a quirky diet of beetroot, olive oil and garlic to fight HIV.

“Today’s action was illegal, and we were well aware of it. We realised that some of our members might be arrested, but this is an emergency situation,” he said.

“We need to draw attention to this issue. Bodies like the judicial inspectorate and the human rights commission need to take this more seriously.”

Tshabalala-Msimang came under fire this week at the International Aids Conference in Toronto after the South African stall at the exhibition included garlic, lemon and beetroot.

South African AIDS activist Mark Heywood told a packed gathering at the Toronto summit: “I believe our minister of health should resign.”

South Africa is estimated to have one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, with about 5.5 million people thought to carry the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS.

The TAC won a court order earlier this year compelling the Westville prison in the coastal city of Durban to provide ARV treatment to HIV-positive inmates.

But it now accuses the government of dragging its feet in executing the court order, following which one of the original 15 applicants at the prison, identified only as “MM”, died of AIDS.

“More than 110 other prisoners died of Aids in 2005,” said a TAC memorandum handed out at yesterday’s protest gathering. “Prisoners are dying in their cells and in the prison hospital ward.”