The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has urged the public not to vote for local government election candidates who were inactive in the fight against HIV/Aids.
”If candidates do not support testing for HIV or Aids, don’t vote for them. If candidates don’t support the use of condoms, don’t vote for them,” said TAC chairperson Zackie Achmat.
Medication as part of a comprehensive plan worked, Achmat said, adding that he climbed Table Mountain on Monday.
”A few years ago I thought I’d never do it,” the HIV-positive activist said.
The TAC wanted just three things from the government — accountability, responsiveness and transparency — guaranteed in the opening paragraph of the Constitution.
Sitting before a banner reading ”Stop the denialism! Provide leadership on HIV and Aids,” TAC Secretary General Sipho Mthathi said the campaign was encouraging its supporters and the public to vote, but to vote according to their conscience.
It was not endorsing any political party, but would actively campaign against candidates who are Aids denialists, she said.
The TAC would, for instance, campaign against a particular — but unnamed — ANC ward candidate in Khayelitsha, for instance, unless he was disciplined by the party. The candidate was a supporter of controversial vitamin salesperson Matthias Rath.
Mthathi said newly elected councillors would be held accountable on HIV and Aids issues from March 2.
”We want to see planning happening on every level, from ward councillor to mayor to district health team.”
Mthathi and Achmat also expressed their concern over the conduct and comments of the ANC and Communist Youth Leagues regarding the verbal abuse and stoning of the complainant in the Jacob Zuma rape trial.
They said that just as Zuma had the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty, she also had the right to be believed until it was proved otherwise.
”To subject a complainant in a rape case to threats and intimidation demonstrates callous contempt for all women and for the constitutionally protected human rights that form the cornerstone of our hard-won democracy,” the TAC said.
”We call on Jacob Zuma to insist that his supporters respect the rights of the complainant.” – Sapa