An unparalleled cause

A number of people have over the years played a role in the development of the TAC and our battle for antiretrovirals. There are too many to mention. In the following pages a small group of people who played a role in one way or another and represent various constituencies, share their recollections of the past and their dreams for the future.

Friday morning, 5 July 2002, the Constitutional Court upheld the TAC’s constitutional challenge to the government’s dogged refusal to implement Nevirapine treatment to combat mother-to-child transmission of HIV/Aids. It had been a long, legally complex, politically fraught and emotionally draining case. For the TAC, one of our young democracy’s signal successes, it had been a much more daunting experience. Were it not for its remarkable efforts the happy outcome for many thousands of mothers and their babies might well have been different and many more could have been condemned to a painful and lingering death by mindless government policy.

The manner of the TAC’s victory over the forces of obstruction was an example for human-rights activists everywhere. The genius lay in the two-pronged strategy of combining dignified and disciplined public demonstration with skilled and sharply focused constitutional litigation: thousands of marchers proudly proclaimed their HIV status (or sympathy) while their human rights were being forcefully asserted in court.

Consequently, when the legal challenge to the government’s stubborn denialism was upheld, public opinion had already brought sufficient pressure to bear on policy-makers, and rapid implementation of the sensible measures TAC had advocated could follow.

For me the TAC case will always hold a particular poignancy. My wife had been nagging me for weeks to get to Gideon Mendel’s A Broken Landscape exhibition at the MuseuMAfricA before it closed, but we simply hadn’t had time. That Friday afternoon we had a breathing space. Mendel’s photographs combined starkly with words to depict the ravages of HIV/Aids and the human tragedy visited on millions of defenceless people. In tears we followed the particular story of a young couple in the Western Cape’s pilot Nevirapine programme whose newborn had received the potentially life-saving treatment, and I realised that had I given in to marital nagging earlier I’d have had to recuse myself from the TAC case – such is the power of art to move.

The TAC’s ability to harness the talents and skills of so many citizens – even art – in its cause is unparalleled. And its policy of critical yet constructive engagement with officialdom has saved innumerable lives. Its demise would be a national disaster.