Recent calls for former president Thabo Mbeki and former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to be charged with genocide are unhelpful, an HIV and Aids association said on Tuesday.

"We need to spend all the limited resources and time we have in fighting HIV and Aids rather than focusing on fighting people and things that happened in the past," National Association of People living with HIV/Aids secretary general Nkululeko Nxesi said in a statement.

The association was responding to calls by the Young Communist League for Mbeki to be brought to book for his handling of the HIV/Aids issue during his term of office.

"It is important that we move forward and stop trying to settle scores and by being vengeful."

Nxesi said Tshabalala-Msimang's statements about nutrition carried some weight.

"Many [people living with HIV/Aids] still do not have access to nutrition and food security. This causes most of them not to take the treatment that is provided by the government clinics and hospitals."

On Monday, Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota described calls for the genocide charges to be laid as irresponsible. Genocide was a deliberate policy or decision to kill people, he said. There was no such decision either by the ANC or Cabinet.

Lekota's statement came a week after youth leader Julius Malema said the ANC Youth League would not allow Mbeki to be charged with genocide.

"We must never surrender our leaders," Malema said at a gala dinner of the Pan African Youth Union in Boksburg last Monday.

"We must not charge one of our own. If we allow that, the same thing would happen to [Zimbabwean President Robert] Mugabe, and the same would happen to [President Jacob] Zuma, and the next thing you know they will come for you," he said.

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