important events

1998: Gugu Dlamini killed for revealing her HIV+ status

1999: Edwin Cameron “comes out”

1998: Simon Nkoli Dies

New Social Movements in South Africa

Definition:

Politically and/or socially directed collectives, often involving multiple organizations and networks, focused on changing one or more elements of the social, political, and economic system within which they are located.

Ballard, Habib, and Valoodia (2006)

New social movements

Treatment Action Campaign (1998)
Concerned Citizens Forum (1999)
Anti-Privatization Forum, Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee; Anti-Eviction Campaign (2000)
Landless People’s Movement; Coalition of South Africans for the Basic Income Grant; Education Rights Project (2002)

treatment action campaign

The Treatment Action Campaign (1998) campaigns for greater access to HIV treatment for all South Africans, by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments.
TAC sees cooperation and confrontation with the government as complementary strategies

http://www.tac.org.za

zackie achmat

“The most important dissident in the country since Nelson Mandela”

(S. Power 2003)

zackie achmat

Achmat went on world’s first drug strike in 1999.

I will not take expensive treatment until all ordinary South Africans can get it on the public health system. That probably means I will die a horrible death, even though medical science has made it unnecessary.

Zackie Achmat

SOUTH AFRICA’S BILL OF RIGHTS

27. Health care, food, water and social security

1. Everyone has the right to have access to:

health care services, including reproductive health care;
sufficient food and water;
social security, including, if they are unable to support themselves and their dependants, appropriate social assistance.

2. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realization of each of these rights.

3. No one may be refused emergency medical treatment.

In South Africa:

Health care is a right

tac and citizenship

Struggles to provide people with access to treatment for a deadly disease, but also seeks to transform members into active citizens & empower them.

The difficult decision for me was not to take off my suit and go to the streets to fight for treatment. That was easy. The emotionally torturous thing for me to do was to recognize we had to take on the ANC. Our ANC.

Zackie Achmat

July 27, 2002: Nelson Mandela visited TAC chair Zackie Achmat at Achmat's house in Muizenberg, Cape Town. Mandela promised to take the treatment issue up with Government and praised Achmat as a role model. (“The Coronation.”)

2003: Constitutional Court ordered govt to provide access to ARVs in public hospitals. Huge victory! Achmat’s drug strike ended.
2003: President George Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) brings millions of US dollars to South Africa, helping to provide free ARVS for patients in need.
2008: Cape High Court ruled in favor of TAC against all purveyors of untested & unregistered medicines, especially those selling so-called “cures” for HIV/AIDS.

Oral History and Trauma: HIV/AIDS in South Africa