Pepfar funding, which had been providing about a fifth of South Africa’s total spending on HIV programmes, got a reprieve last October with what was called a “bridge plan”.

But a US State Department official has confirmed that a “phased drawdown” of Pepfar funding would now start.

This was because of “South Africa’s failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration”, the official said.

So bizarre.

Making that decision based on disinformation is par for the course for this administration.