TAC backs threat of mass action with show of muscle

The "Stand Up For Our Lives" March, the largest-yet mobilisation for the rights of people living with HIV in this country, and which took place on Friday (14-2-03), was led by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). What is the TAC and how has it managed to mobilise such solidarity?

A social movement entrenched in the grassroots, the TAC has earned the respect of the international community and among its supporters are celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Danny Glover and Carlos Santana. There was a hiccup this week before the March, but the storm that broke over the use of a photograph of former State President Nelson Mandela wearing a TAC T-shirt to endorse the March has died down. The Nelson Mandela Foundation said that Mandela distanced himself from a march in opposition to the government. But Zackie Achmat, the TAC chairperson, who describes humself as a disciplined member of the ANC, said the March was perceived as anti-government "only by those people in government who opposed their demands".

Achmat, who is HIV-positive and refuses to take the medication he can afford until the government ensures it is made available to all South Africas, has long since earned Mandela's respect. Mandela has visited Achmat on several occasions and urged him to take his medication. The TAC's integrity has never been in question. In fact, the TAC received the 2003 Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights last week. The Award is sponsored by the Henry J Kaiser Foundation and endorsed by Mandela.

The TAC was recognised for its "historic contribution to advancing the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS" and for its contribution to advancing the access to treatment for HIV-positive people in South Africa and internationally. It is a well-deserved acknwledgement for the movement's robust persistence. Achmat and Heywood, the TAC's national Treasurer and spokesperson, are the public face of the movement, which employs 24 people and is run largely by HIV-positive people and African women. Nonkosi Khumalo, its National Women's Co-ordinator, "is not a front for Zackie and I," Heywood quipped. Heywood is an Oxford graduate with an Honours degree in English Language and Literature. He has a solid history of activism that precedes the co-founding of the TAC with Achmat and others in December 1996, and is Project Head of the AIDS Law Project at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The movement posts a yearly audit on the TAC website, which warns the government and drug companies that any donations to it will be returned. Most of its money comes from Bread For All, a German Protestant Church organisation, as well as from US-based organisations - about R6 million a year, which goes into community-based projects, education, nursing and caring for patients. "Our view of the health system is that of a person who walks through our door after having been told that there is no medicine for them at hospitals," Heywood said. In addition to this work, the money also goes into campaigning and "unashamedly" into mobilisation.

The TAC's resilient personality is equal to the task it faces. On 22 August 2001, the TAC was forced to do battle with the government in court to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission. According to Heywood, between then and the TAC's win in the Constitutional Court in July 2002, nearly 70 000 children were infected with HIV.

As a social movement, the TAC had good standing, said Dale McKinley, a spokesperson for the Social Movements Indaba, which applauded the TAC's stance this week and welcomed the fact that the barriers were breaking down between other movements working for basic rights. Heywood credited the government for "the good parts" of the AIDS policy, "but what is missing is the government's commitment to managing all aspects of the epidemic".

The Memorandum delivered on Friday to the government demanded that it sign and implement the National Treatment Plan, which would also have to include a commitment to providing anti-retroviral drugs to people with HIV. The National Treatment Plan was formulated at the National Treatment Conference of the TAC and COSATU in June 2002. It was then negotiated between the government, labour, business and the community sectors of the National Economic, Development and Labour Council between October and November 2002. The Plan proposed interventions that include HIV prevention and improved treatment of othe sexually transmitted diseases, and anti-retroviral drugs and home-based care.

Heywood said the TAC had promised Deputy-President Jacob Zuma, the chairperson of the South Africa National AIDS Council (SANAC) that would it hold off a civil disobedience campaign until the end of February. If the National Treatment Plan was not signed, the campaign would be characterised by non-violence, but laws would be broken and government property would be occupied, he said.

Heywood said that this confrontation was the result of more than four years of "having appealed to the government, negotiated, marched, held inter-faith services, supported it in court against drug companies and even litigated against it to ensure a national mother-to-child HIV prevention prorgamme". He said that the government had the legal power to ensure that all anti-retrovirals were produced locally at affordable prices. "The Treasury has allocated more than R3 billion for HIV/AIDS spending. International agencies would make up the shortfall. We have the industrial capacity to make the medicines, we have the money to pay for it, we have sufficient workpower to train and retain health professionals to implement a treatment plan."

Heywood acknowledged the government's "real problems of capacity to spend money" but said that this could be resolved through more effective partnershps with business and communities. He said that the campaign for anti-retrovirals was not ideological, and that the TAC was not in any way anarchist in nature.


Sunday Independent 16 February 2003.