This is an archive of the Treatment Action Campaign's public documents from December 1998 until October 2008. I created this website because the TAC's website appears unmaintained and people were concerned that it
was becoming increasingly hard to find important documents.

The menu items have been slightly edited and a new stylesheet applied to the site. But none of the documents have been edited, not even for minor errors. The text appears on this site as obtained from the Internet Archive.

The period covered by the archive encompassed the campaign for HIV medicines, the civil disobedience campaigns, the Competition Commission complaints, the 2008 xenophobic violence and the PMTCT, Khayelitsha health workers and Matthias Rath court cases.

TAC Pamphlet Explaining 4 November Court Case

Treatment Plan Timetable Now!

My Right to Know, My Right to Live March to Demand a Treatment Plan Timetable

On 19 November 2003, the Cabinet announced the Operational Plan on Comprehensive

Care and Treatment for HIV and AIDS (Operational Plan). This plan gave hope to

millions of people with HIV because it committed government to:

After the Plan was agreed to by Cabinet many health workers and health officials

made a great effort to make the programme a success. In Gauteng and the Western

Cape thousands of people now benefit from access to treatment. But overall the

programme has been rolled out very slowly. The Operational Plan committed to

treating over 50,000 people by March 2004. But, by October 2004, less than

15,000 people were being treated in public hospitals and clinics.

It is important that ordinary citizens are able to help government with the

implementation of the Operational Plan and that they can hold government

accountable. But this can only be done properly if we know the dates when

clinics and hospitals will begin treatment, the number of people that each

clinic or hospital will be able to treat and how many additional health-care

workers each clinic or hospital will hire to help implement the programme.

Since November 2003 the Operational Plan has referred to a document which

contains most of this information; it is called Annexure A. This document has

still not been made public.

The TAC requested Annexure A from the Minister of Health on 20 February 2004

because we believed this to be the implementation timetable. It is our right to

have this information. The South African Constitution says anyone has the right

of access to any information held by the state. But eight months later, the

Minister has not released the implementation timetable.

The TAC also wrote letters to the ANC and to the Parliamentary Portfolio

Committee on Health asking them to intervene so that we would not have to take

the Minister of Health to court to get the implementation timetable. But the

Minister still refused.

As a last resort, the TAC decided to take the Minister of Health to court to

compel her to make the implementation plan, which we understood to be Annexure

A, available. After the TAC led court papers on 18 June 2004, the Department

opposed the case and only in September 2004 responded for the first time

through an affidavit stating that Annexure A is a draft document that was never

of officially adopted. According to the Department all references to Annexure A

in the Operational Plan, were errors that they forgot to correct.

This was very surprising to the TAC because since February 2004 we were led to

believe that the implementation plan was Annexure A. There are many references

to Annexure A in the Operational Plan. Also, it has been nearly a year since

the Operational Plan was adopted by Cabinet and this is the first time that the

Department said that Annexure A was only a draft and that all references to it

in the Operational Plan were errors.

If the Department is telling the truth there are two possibilities:

(1) a new implementation timetable for the Operational Plan has been developed,

in which case government is Constitutionally obligated to make it available, or

(2) no implementation timetable exists, in which case government has a

Constitutional obligation to develop one.

Therefore the TAC is proceeding as follows:

1. On 4 November we will ask the Pretoria High Court to award us all the legal

costs for taking this case so far because it took government so long to inform

us that Annexure A was a draft. But in our court papers we explain that the

cost is not only about money, but about people s lives. Every delay by

government results in people dying before they get access to treatment.

2. In six provinces, TAC members will demonstrate that they want access to

life-saving information. For many people who need treatment and want to know

when and where it will be available, the right to know is important for their

right to live.

3. Our lawyers will still ask the department for the final implementation

timetable.

a. If the department has an implementation timetable but refuses to provide it,

we will ask the courts to compel it to make it available because the

Constitution guarantees the right to access to information.

b. If there is no timetable, we will ask the courts to compel the Minister of

Health to develop one because the Constitution guarantees our rights to life,

dignity and healthcare. Also, the Operational Plan cannot be implemented

properly without an implementation timetable.

The Minister can stop all legal action against her and her department by simply

making the implementation timetable publicly available. Demand the Right to

Know. Join TAC events in Pretoria, Cape Town, East London, Polokwane, Nelspruit

and Durban on 4 November.