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.
19 May, 2006
Jonathan Berger is a researcher in and head of the Aids Law Project's Law and Treatment Access Unit
Sibani, thanks for your insightful analysis of the TAC. Now I know it is divided into "reasonable whites and Indians," "troublemaking coloureds" and "unthinking blacks."
As a white, aspirant marathon runner who works for the Aids Law Project, am I in Heywood's camp? Or as an openly gay man who enjoys a good fight, let alone an opportunity to "destabilise our democracy," am I part of Achmat's gang? Or as an African (are we not all Africans?), driven by my passion to deal with HIV/Aids, am I one of Mthathi's "useful idiots?"
Perhaps I am too stupid to care. In which case, kindly advise me on how to deal with a pressing matter - Matthias Rath. Should I:
As part of the "rational" faction, allow the honourable doctor to conduct his experiments only on "lesser humans," such as prisoners and asylum seekers with HIV? They're not getting access to ARVs anyway, so why not high doses of vitamin supplements?
As part of the "T-shirt wearing, rent-a-crowd faction," be concerned that the promotion of scientifically proven medicines undermines the dignity of Africans, offer to recruit further trial participants outside the Cape Town townships?
Or, as part of the TAC's "extremist rejectionist faction," take all legal means necessary to ensure that the Health Department's law enforcement unit, under the minister and director general's guidance, use the laws passed by Parliament to stop Rath and his merry band from exacerbating a public health crisis? -- Jonathan Berger, Interim Chairperson - Gay Jewish Men's Faction, TAC