Using certain types of denial that western politicians have a history of as a reference, are they doing that because that's what the voters want to hear?
Interestingly I wouldn't say it seemed so. AIDS devastated the political base of the politician in question and people who fought for the right to treatment were also politically popular. I think it may have just been a strange ideological bent in a specific set of political circle. Thankfully these ideas and policies have been pretty much entirely consigned to history now. The consequences were terrible though, nearly a million children were orphaned because of both parents dying of AIDS. I can't find a specific source to cite a specific number, they all reference much higher numbers across the whole Southern African region.
