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.

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Emergency Humanitarian Relief Effort in Cape Town in Response to Xenophobic Violence

25 May, 2008 - 19:24 — Eduard Grebe

Approximately 10,000 people have been displaced across Cape Town by xenophobic violence

TAC and the AIDS Law Project would like to extend thanks to all of the individuals and organisations who have assisted us to provide humanitarian relief to displaced people. In particular we would like to thank Sonke Gender Justice Network and ARASA for their help in coordinating the relief effort and Habonim Dror for providing us with a constant stream of volunteers and donations of food and other necessities.

Since Thursday evening TAC activists, assisted by volunteers from some of our partner organisations as well as numerous concerned citizens from the wider community, have organised a non-stop humanitarian relief effort for individuals and families who have been displaced by xenophobic violence in the greater Cape Town area. We have had TAC members on the ground at sites of sanctuary in communities across the city including Phillipi, Nyanga, Kraaifontein, Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and Cape Town CBD. We have also dispatched humanitarian assistance in the form of food, blankets and other basic necessities as well as medical and legal services to displaced persons at over 30 locations from Oceanview to Delft. Some of the sites at which we have intervened include:

  • Khayelitsha, where activists have been working in shifts around the clock at four locations to provide relief to a total of 1800 people. Medecins Sans Frontieres has established medical relief services in the area.
  • Kraaifontein Youth Centre: Activists have helped to supply over 1000 people taking shelter there with food, blankets and other necessities.
  • Nyanga: Volunteers at KTC Hall and Zolani sports centre are working around the clock with local community leaders to provide assistance to more than 1500 people between the two sites. Moyo Restaurant in Stellenbosch has generously provided food to the KTC centre which TAC has helped to distribute.
  • Kuilsrivier: New Women's Movement, has helped to supply more than 700 people seeking refuge at Sarepta Sports Centre.
  • Masiphumelelo/Oceanview: We have distributed aid to over 1000 people taking shelter at the police station and churches in the Oceanview area. 
  • Cape Town CBD: Habonim Dror and the Mustadafin Foundation helped us provide food and other forms of assistance to over 600 people sheltering at Cape Town Central train station on Friday night. We have also provided food, water and blankets to refugees at Caledon Square police station and Customs House in the Foreshore. We are also assisting newly arrived refuges at these locations.

We will continue to organise humanitarian relief at these and other sites across Cape Town for as long as necessary. We therefore appeal for donations of:

  • Food: bread; canned goods; bottled water; dry goods such as beans and mealie meal; baby food and infant formula as well as sandwiches .
  • Basic necessities such as toilet paper; women's sanitary napkins and pads, nappies, toothpaste and tooth brushes, soap, and washing powder.
  • Blankets and warm clothes.

Donations can be delivered to the TAC/ALP offices Westminster House, 122 Longmarket Street (Cnr Longmarket and Adderley), Cape Town.

We also need monetary donations. Please donate to TAC using one of the methods described here.

Please phone Andrew Warlick on 082-516-8873 for more infomation.