The launch of the Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project - the inappropriately acronymed Grip - was heartily welcomed by the police, courts and doctors in South Africa's eastern province of Mpumalanga last year. But Grip fell foul of the authorities with another of its services. The organisation ensured that women were swiftly given access to anti-retroviral drugs, paid for by donations. The Mpumalanga provincial health minister, Sibongile Manana, was outraged. She said President Thabo Mbeki had banned the supply of anti-retrovirals and that their prescription was an attempt to poison black people and was "undermining the present government".