 They received support from Thabo Mbeki, then South African deputy president and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the health minister at the time.Mbeki criticised the Medicines Control Council, stating that "it became more and more difficult to understand the attitude adopted by the MCC" and that "I and many others will not rest until the efficacy or otherwise of Virodene is established scientifically" in direct opposition to the rejection of human trials by the Medicines Control Council.In the same letter Mbeki went as far as suggesting that parties who caused the controversy surrounding Virodene wanted to create the AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa