Hundreds of Britons and South Africans living in the United Kingdom joined international dignitaries, including Annie Lennox, former UK Cabinet minister Chris Smith and author Gillian Slovo, in central London last night to show their support for the Treatment Action Campaign.
Guests, many wearing TAC’s trademark HIV-positive T-shirts, gathered to mark the launch of the Friends of the Treatment Action Campaign, a UK-based charity established to support the fight for HIV/Aids treatment in South Africa, where about 800 people die of the disease unnecessarily every day. FoTAC will raise money for TAC’s campaigns and also raise awareness in the UK about the HIV/Aids crisis.
Annie Lennox, the former Eurythmics singer, said: ”It is scandalous and absurd that a virtual genocide can go pretty much unchecked and unacknowledged by the world at large. We can no longer afford to stick our heads in the sand. As a woman and a mother, I am honoured to join hands with FoTAC to make my contribution in whatever way I can.”
Chris Smith, the only senior politician in the world to acknowledge that he is HIV-positive, said he would not be alive today if it were not for the anti-retrovirals that are denied to millions. Smith recently visited South Africa to observe TAC’s work.
He said: ”The Treatment Action Campaign’s work in recent years has been desperately needed and really successful in changing minds, attitudes, drug prices, and government policies. But there’s still so much to be done, and I’m proud to support them.”
Sipho Mthathi, TAC’s newly elected secretary general, received a loud welcome from the crowd. She thanked Londoners for caring about the fate of HIV-positive South Africans. ”As South Africans we have fought for and won our freedoms, and I know many of you here helped us do this,” she said. ”But now we need to keep fighting; we need to keep the hope and the promise of those freedoms alive.” She described the HIV/Aids epidemic as the new apartheid, and said TAC did not want to attack the South African government, rather to challenge it to work with the organisation to treat 200 000 people by 2006.
South African photographer Gideon Mendel took photographs of Annie Lennox, Sipho Mthathi, Gillian Slovo and Chris Smith wearing TAC T-shirts, which are freely available for fair use. These pictures provide defining images in the international community’s support for South Africa’s HIV/Aids crisis, and particularly the Treatment Action Campaign.
Other patrons who could not attend the launch include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Zackie Achmat, Antony Sher, Glenys Kinnock MEP, Ann Grant (former UK High Commissioner to SA), Professor Shula Marks, Gillian Anderson, Sharleen Spiteri (from Texas) and author Jeanette Winterson. – Guardian Unlimited Â