Hartford: Partying in Jozi with Clinton, Spacey, beauties and (probably) Jeffrey Epstein

Key topics:Activists and global VIPs met in 2002 to support ARV access in SABill Clinton and Kevin Spacey attended party linked to Epstein’s planeEvent captured tension of HIV/AIDS struggle under Mbeki’s denialism.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Dirk Hartford.In July 2002, in Thabo Mbeki’s vainglorious and despicable HIV/Aids denialism, I cracked an invite to a party which was, in retrospect, as close as I ever got to infamy and a Puff Diddy-like freak off.The attendees, ironically, were the illuminati of the struggle against Mbeki’s idiocy. South Africa at the time had the highest concentration of HIV infections on the planet.In what became the most successful post-liberation civic struggle, organisations like Zachie Achmat’s Treatment Action Campaign, Judi Fortuin’s Lovelife and the YFM youth radio station I led at the time were in the forefront of the battle for ARVs for people with Aids.Those organisations were all represented at the party, as well as a host of VIPs, including prominent sympathetic business leaders, dignitaries, diplomats, and leading medical professionals. There were about 60 people invited.The host was Charlayne Hunter-Gault, CNN’s Bureau Chief for Africa at the time, and a prominent American black intellectual to this day. She and her banker/businessman husband lived in one of those illustrious mining baron-type mansions on The Valley Road in Westcliffe. A perfect setting for a Johannesburg party if ever there was one.This wasn’t a supper party. It was a party party, and the invite was for 8 pm as I recall. The occasion was to meet some world-famous people who were in South Africa to support our struggle for ARVs for people with HIV.At about 11pm the famous people blew in. There were at least 10 of them including several beautiful young women to add to the already well-represented beautiful South African women in attendance.I can’t say for sure that Jeffrey Epstein was there because I had no idea who he was at the time. However, disgraced actor Kevin Spacey was present, and in his public comments on the trip, he remains ambiguous about whether Epstein was physically present.What is not disputed is that this gang of famous people, led by none other than ex-US President Bill Clinton, were all guests of the Clinton Foundation and had flown into South Africa on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane..Read more:.The Economist: Paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is still causing trouble for Donald Trump.Clinton worked the room upon his arrival, greeting and meeting everyone in the room within about 10 minutes. He looked pretty ragged already - his eyes were bloodshot and he and his crew were noticeably hyped up - but he was incredibly charismatic, charming and warm. One of those rare people that, even if he weren’t famous, you would be unlikely to forget.It was one helluva party. Within half an hour of their arrival, the music was cranked up and everyone got down and dirty on the dance floor. Motown sounds. I remember Stevie Wonder’s "Living for the City" eliciting whoops of joy from Americans and South Africans alike.The alcohol was flowing like a river, the whiff of ganja was in the air, and quite a few of us were doing lines of cocaine in the gilded bathrooms.At one point, Kevin Spacey got up on a table in the middle of the room and did a hilarious impersonation of a politician, including taking the mickey out of Mbeki’s stupidity. People roared with laughter.Clinton danced wildly and provocatively sexily, his shirt eventually unbuttoned to his navel, with most of the gorgeous women in the room. One was a close friend of mine, a doctor and leading HIV activist figure, and I recall joking with her equally illustrious doctor husband that if he's not careful, he's gonna lose her to Clinton right then and there.More cannot be said. We all staggered out of there shortly before dawn. If they were going on to a freak off, I wasn’t invited.

Hartford: Partying in Jozi with Clinton, Spacey, beauties and (probably) Jeffrey Epstein

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