The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is confident of a favourable ruling in its anti-defamation interdict proceedings against anti-Aids drug lobbyist Matthias Rath, in which judgement was reserved by the Cape High Court this week.
The TAC started interdict proceedings two months ago, after it was repeatedly described as ”a front company for pharmaceutical multinationals” and as ”peddling death and disease” in posters and pamphlets distributed in Cape Town’s townships and in advertisements in national newspapers.
The legal steps followed the banning of full-page Rath Health Foundation adverts by the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa earlier this year. In its ruling, the authority said there had been insufficient expert evidence to back the foundation’s claims.
At the time, the foundation had established an informal clinic in Khayelitsha to disburse vitamins with an uncanny resemblance to anti-retroviral medication.
This week TAC official Mark Haywood said that, while it was impossible to forecast the court’s decision, it was clear that Rath’s arguments were ”full of sound and fury”, but without firm footing in the law.
”The real question for us is: How far will they [the full Bench led by Judge Siraj Desai] go? We want to stop all allegations against the TAC that involve outright lies.”
He said the TAC hoped for a ruling that would end not only allegations that the TAC was backed by inter-national pharmaceutical companies, but also Rath’s claims that the grassroots HIV/Aids treatment organisation paid people, using cash and sandwiches, to attend marches.
Judge Desai, Judge Essa Moosa and Judge Willem Louw this week heard from lawyers for Rath and the Traditional Healers’ Organisation that the TAC did not have a reputation worth protecting. But as TAC advocate Geoff Budlender pointed out, no proof was submitted to substantiate the funding allegations or other claims.
While acrimony entered final arguments on Tuesday, supporters of both sides again demonstrated outside the court under the gaze of several policemen. Tensions had run high at earlier court appearances.
The court case has reflected the often heated public debate on the role of vitamins, nutrition and anti-retroviral medication that has festered for years in the wake of the health ministry’s repeatedly ambiguous pronouncements.