The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is remaining tight-lipped hours ahead of a planned international day of action on Thursday. ”It is a secret,” said Rukia Cornelius, the campaign’s national manager, on Wednesday.
The TAC hopes its global day of action — which will see protests at South African embassies and government institutions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London and Washington, DC, as well as possibly in Canada — will highlight the government’s perceived inactivity in the face of the Aids pandemic.
A memorandum is expected to be handed to the South African high commissioner in London, Lindiwe Mabuza.
The day of action comes barely a week after the government’s Aids policies came under renewed attack at a global conference in Canada, with campaigners venting their anger against Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
At the Toronto conference, activists protested against Tshabalala-Msimang’s recommended recipe of garlic, beetroot, lemon and African potatoes to fight one of the biggest Aids epidemics in the world.
The TAC’s national event will start with an interfaith service at St George’s cathedral in Cape Town at 10am, calling for immediate government action to stop 1 000 new HIV infections and 800 Aids deaths a day in South Africa.
”The key focus is addressing government’s intransigence on HIV/Aids and also the Department of Correctional Services’ standpoint on treatment and prevention in prisons,” said Cornelius.
The TAC has circulated a five-point list of demands ahead of Thursday. It calls on President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, to convene a national meeting and plan for the HIV/Aids crisis; to end deaths in prison by providing nutrition, treatment and prevention; to dismiss Tshabalala-Msimang; and to respect the Constitution and build a people’s health service.
She said the TAC will be involved in mass protest and not civil disobedience actions, without specifying the difference.
TAC leader Zackie Achmat, who together with the campaign’s general secretary, Sipho Mthathi, will address the interfaith service, is scheduled to appear in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court in September — this after occupying the Western Cape provincial legislature with supporters in an act of civil disobedience.
Achmat and dozens of TAC activists were arrested last week for demonstrating in the government building in Cape Town. The activists were demanding Aids drugs be made available to HIV-infected prisoners and that Tshabalala-Msimang be sacked.
”We are prepared for the possibility of mass arrests [on Thursday],” Cornelius confirmed on Wednesday.
She said protests are taking place in Durban, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.
Cornelius said at least three political parties, who she declined to identify, had called the organisation for a possible rostrum. ”Our point has always been that we can’t give a platform to a political party,” said Cornelius.
Thursday’s international protest marks the latest in a series of ongoing skirmishes between the Aids activists and the government over how best to tackle the Aids pandemic affecting swathes of South Africa.
South Africa has among the highest incidence of HIV/Aids in the world, with more than five million people living with the incurable virus.
Prison action
Meanwhile, National Assembly correctional services committee chairperson Dennis Bloem has slated the TAC’s action this week at Durban’s Westville prison, saying he does not think it is really concerned about the lives of people living with Aids.
Briefing the media at Parliament on Wednesday, Bloem said the TAC’s senseless and irresponsible action at the prison on Tuesday should be condemned.
The TAC had demanded access to the prison ”under the pretext of wanting to assess HIV/Aids-infected offenders and provide them with anti-retroviral [ARV] treatment”.
All correctional centres are security institutions, applying strict measures because of the nature of the offenders they house. ”We cannot allow a situation where people want to undermine the safety and security laws of our country.
”I do not think that an organisation like the TAC is really concerned about the lives of people living with HIV/Aids. You cannot politicise such a serious disease and put the lives of people in danger for your own personal interests,” Bloem said.
He said a ”fact sheet on new developments on the ARV treatment programme for offenders” at the prison showed 93 inmates were benefiting from the comprehensive ARV treatment programme. Altogether 47 of these were already receiving ARV medication.
Nine of them, despite already being on ARVs, were among the 15 offenders represented by the Law Aids Project in the Durban High Court case demanding ARV treatment.
The Department of Correctional Services will brief the committee next month on progress and initiatives on HIV/Aids projects in all 241 prisons around the country, Bloem said. — Sapa