BY PETER DWYER
DURBAN — On August 8, in a move described as a "backflip" by the mainstream press, South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) government announced that it had instructed the department of health to develop a plan to provide anti-HIV/AIDS drugs in the public health system. Until now, the ANC had resisted providing the medicines, claiming they were "untested" and even "poisonous". If this "backflip" is ever implemented, it will be in large part due to activism of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
"Avoid AIDS, come inside", declares a sign outside a sex shop near the Durban beachfront. On August 1-3, just 100 metres away, 500 TAC activists, from 110 branches across in South Africa, met at the second TAC national congress to plan how to carry on their fight for the roll out of a comprehensive treatment plan for the 5 million people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
With the highest national HIV prevalence in the world, AIDS is estimated to have caused 40% of all adult deaths in South Africa 2001, as many as 1000 people a day according to UNAIDS (a figure not challenged by the ANC government). Addressing the TAC congress on the final day, the historic nature of this campaign was underscored by the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS, Stephen Lewis, who compared the TAC with some of the greatest social movements of the 20th century and with the "anti-globalisation" movement of the 21st.
Straight and gay people (the majority were black women in their mid-20s) gathered with representatives from the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Council of Churches and other affiliated groups to elect the TAC leadership, ratify its constitution and, most importantly, to debate whether to re-start a civil disobedience campaign to force the ANC government to sign and implement the "framework agreement on a National Prevention and Treatment Plan", which was negotiated by mandated representatives of government, business, labour and the community during October and November 2002.
Over the three days of the congress, "positive Muslims", "health care workers united against AIDS", trade unionists and the unemployed, socialists and priests who make up TAC's united front campaign, hugged, danced, sang, laughed and cried (in frustration with the ANC government). The congress unanimously vowed to continue their struggle for treatment and embark, once again, on civil disobedience.
'Viva TAC, viva!'
Such was the heady atmosphere, that one could not help making comparisons with the liberation movement against apartheid. Although people drew heavily on past struggles by singing popular anti-apartheid tunes, they also broke into new songs, dances and symbols based on their experiences and campaigns under the ANC government.
As one young poet skillfully and polemically rapped, "I wonder how it is to walk along the road to peace and democracy without treatment", then a woman jumped up and sang a customary "praise song", it was clear that it is not the ANC that these young people identify with but the TAC. Despite every delegate starting their speeches with roars of "Viva, TAC, viva!", a seemingly unquenchable response was guaranteed each time. Amid songs of "TAC is the champion since 1998" (its founding year), nobody dared to call out "Viva ANC!" (including a rather feeble and apologetic ANC parliamentarian who addressed the congress).
TAC national chairperson Zackie Achmat (a self-proclaimed socialist who has been arrested and detained five times, and operated underground for 10 years, during apartheid) was re-elected unopposed. Achmat has won "Mandela-esque" adulation and respect amongst TAC campaigners. Indeed, Nelson Mandela has praised Achmat as "a role model whose activism is based on principles that are admired way beyond South Africa's borders".
It was not Mandela's personal plea that finally persuaded Achmat, who is HIV positive, to give up his principled refusal to take life-saving antiretroviral drugs until everyone in South Africa has affordable access to them, but the unanimous vote and pleas by delegates. Without fanfare, it was subtly made apparent on the final day of the congress that Achmat would start taking drugs. Ever the propagandist, and with a boyish grin that masks his constant fight against illness, he rhetorically asked why should he allow South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to kill another person.
In the last three years in Europe, I have been fortunate to have participated in many anti-capitalist marches and the 1-million-strong anti-war march at the European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002, but the congress was a "festival of resistance" the likes of which I have never experienced before. From the first songs and dances that punctuated proceedings, the mood of the TAC congress was celebratory and frustrated, militant and defiant, yet shrouded in anguish for those who have died and continue to die unnecessarily because the ANC government had so far refused to pay for treatment. No wonder that Mark Heywood, TAC national secretary, noted that one of the main challenges facing TAC activists "is to stay alive".
'Phansi Mbeki, phansi!'
And alive they were, as amid the uplifting cacophony of cheers and chants, speaker after speaker refuted the ANC government's claim that AIDS drugs are ineffective and toxic. As if to provide "living" proof of this, on August 3, as the votes for the national secretariat were being counted, people living with HIV/AIDS spoke out with almost evangelical zeal about how antiretroviral drugs have worked for them.
To the cries of "Phansi (down with) Thabo, phansi", they condemned the ANC president. "Thabo Mbeki is going to have to answer in the next life", they sang.
The TAC is an organisation rooted in South Africa's popular tradition of resistance. As Molefe Tsele made clear: "There is nothing new in what we are doing [for] we are a people of campaigns, it is who we are".
The TAC has utilised the right to protest, the courts, research, the Human Rights Commission, the Competition Commission and the post-apartheid state's corporate bodies to try to change ANC policy. Constantly having to dismiss government charges that it is undermining democracy, the TAC has shown that people living with HIV/AIDS "are not slaves of democracy but citizens in a country who will hold its government accountable", as Achmat proudly proclaimed as activists called out, "No treatment, no vote!".
(Indeed, it is intriguing to see how those leaders who fought for democracy now respond when it is used to make them accountable. In the week prior to the TAC congress, I attended four grassroots-organised rallies in Durban townships protesting against water cut offs and rent increases, during which people sang, "No water, no vote!".)
Activism
In past four years, TAC activists have handed numerous petitions and memorandums to the government, which have generally gone unanswered. Despite this, the TAC has continued to campaign, calling on other popular forces to work with them to create a "people's health movement". They have trained and educated a new layer of activists and the general public about HIV/AIDS, their constitutional rights and broader issues, such as the power of the giant drug companies in a globalised capitalist world.
Evidence of this abounded at the congress as people relived stories of how they are trying, with few resources, in mainly impoverished townships, to inform people about HIV/AIDS and to counter the ANC government's denial that HIV leads to AIDS.
This is a small but growing army of volunteers and activists who are learning, distributing information and giving moral support — sometimes at great cost (recently in the Chesterville township in Durban, a TAC activist openly living with HIV/AIDS was brutally attacked in her house). Under great pressure and not sure if they are always doing the right thing, activists told how they are organising workshops, offering practical and tender support, and counselling at hospitals, clinics and in people's homes. These are people rightly proud of what they have achieved.
"As I've joined TAC", said a breathless animated older woman from Cape Town, "I have realised I have got the power to help my community." Another younger woman openly living with HIV/AIDS, from Limpopo province, one of South Africa's poorest areas, told how a mobile health clinic visits her area only once a month. Yet even there, the TAC has helped create a small group of people who at least know to demand that the mobile clinics have the relevant drugs for those living with HIV/AIDS.
One woman, who was raped, is now confident enough to live openly with HIV, told how as a TAC activist she cannot cope with the number of people diagnosed HIV positive who come to her for help and advice (often in secret). A farm worker told how, because of information from TAC comrades, he persuaded a (white) doctor from a private practice in a small rural Western Cape town to come and give talks to people about HIV/AIDS. The doctor is now an active member of the TAC.
On the night the congress ended, on August 3, TAC supporters protested during a speech by the much despised health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, at the opening of an international conference on HIV/AIDS in Durban. The next day, hundreds of protesters marched to the conference carrying wooden crosses and posters with the names of some of those who have died from the disease.
At the protest rally, as scientists, academics and government bureaucrats pressed up against the conference window to see what all the noise was about, Zackie Achmat declared that the South African people were tired of the ANC's "foot-dragging" in implementing an antiretroviral treatment plan.
The week that followed the TAC congress was marked by a plethora of vague government statements about a commitment to roll out treatment — soon. TAC activists have long since tired of promises and their national congress showed that they are still dying to fight for treatment.
[Peter Dwyer works at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Natal and is involved in community struggles around Durban. Visit the TAC web site at <http://www.tac.org.za>.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 20, 2003.
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