Zackie Achmat | |
---|---|
Born | Vrededorp, Johannesburg, South Africa | 21 March 1962
Nationality | South African |
Alma mater | University of the Western Cape |
Occupation(s) | Activist, film director |
Employer | Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know) |
Known for | HIV/AIDS activism |
Political party | Independent |
Board member of | Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know) Equal Education |
Spouse | Dalli Weyers (m. 2008; div. 2011) |
Parent(s) | Suleiman Achmat and Mymoena Adams [1] |
Relatives | Taghmeda "Midi" Achmat (sister) [1] |
Website | www |
Abdurrazack "Zackie" Achmat (born 21 March 1962) is a South African activist and film director. [2] [3] [4] He is a co-founder the Treatment Action Campaign and known worldwide for his activism on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. He currently serves as board member and co-director of Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know), [5] an organisation which aims to build and support social justice organisations and leaders, and is the chairperson of Equal Education. [6] [7]
Achmat was born in the Johannesburg suburb of Vrededorp to a Muslim Cape Malay family and grew up in the Cape Coloured community in Salt River during apartheid. [8] [9] He was raised by his mother and his aunt who were both shop stewards for the Garment Workers Union. [4] [3]
He did not matriculate but nevertheless graduated with a BA Hons degree in English literature from the University of the Western Cape in 1992 and studied filmmaking at the Cape Town Film School. [2] [4] [3]
Achmat set fire to his school in Salt River in support of the 1976 student protests and was imprisoned several times during his youth for political activities. [10] [11] He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1980 while serving time in prison. [12] Between 1985 and 1990 he was a member of the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC, [3] [4] a Trotskyist breakaway group of the ANC and precursor to the Democratic Socialist Movement. [13]
Achmat describes his political ideology as democratic socialist since the unbanning of the ANC in 1990. [12] [4] Despite being a member of the ANC, he vigorously opposed the HIV/AIDS denialism promoted by former President Thabo Mbeki and other senior ANC members and in 2004 he withdrew his ANC membership under Mbeki's leadership. [14] In 2006, Achmat called on fellow party members to formulate appropriate HIV policies and oust Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. [2] [15] [16] [17] He has also been outspoken in his criticism of President Jacob Zuma and ANC corruption. [12] [14] [18]
Achmat stood as an independent for national parliament on the Western Cape regional list in the 2024 South African general election. [19] Achmat received 10679 votes, which does not reach the minimum threshold required to gain a seat in the National Assembly. He conceded defeat and vowed to continue politics by contesting in the 2026 local elections. [20]
Achmat co-founded the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality in 1994, and as its director he ensured protections for gays and lesbians in the new South African Constitution, and facilitated the prosecution of cases that led to the decriminalisation of sodomy and granting of equal status to same-sex partners in the immigration process. [3] [4] [9] [21] [22] Achmat wrote a much-cited article about sexuality in South African prisons, based on his personal experiences. [23]
Before co-founding the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in 1998, [15] Achmat was a director of the AIDS Law Project based out of the University of the Witwatersrand, which is now headed by Achmat's longtime collaborator Mark Heywood. The AIDS Law Project and TAC work closely together in all the legal matters that arise in the course of advocating for the right to health, including prosecuting cases and defending TAC volunteers. [4]
Achmat publicly announced his HIV-positive status in 1998 and stated that he was refusing to take antiretroviral drugs until all who needed them had access to them. [2] [9] [10] He began taking antiretrovirals in August 2003 when a national congress of TAC activists voted to urge him to begin antiretroviral treatment. He finally announced that he would start treatment shortly before the government announced that it would make antiretrovirals available in the public sector. [24] Achmat's motives have never been independently established and he does not mention this incident in affidavits that he has submitted on public interest matters containing his life history. [25]
Achmat was one of 44 TAC activists arrested in 2006 for occupying provincial government offices in Cape Town as a protest in order to call for Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour to be charged with culpable homicide for the death of an HIV-positive inmate at Westville Prison in Durban. The protesters were charged with trespassing and ordered to appear before court. The inmate was one of 15 prisoners who were plaintiffs in a case against the Departments of Health and Correctional Services, suing to be provided access to antiretroviral drugs. The court ordered the government to provide the drugs immediately. [15] [26]
In 2008, Achmat co-founded the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), an organisation with the aim of promoting the rights enshrined in South Africa's Constitution, particularly among poor and unemployed people living in the country. In 2009 he co-founded the Centre for Law and Social Justice, subsequently renamed Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know), with Gavin Silber. [1] [27]
In 2013, Achmat and 18 other SJC activists were arrested for an illegal gathering outside the Cape Town Civic Centre, where they were protesting about sanitation services in the township of Khayelitsha. [28]
In 2018, Achmat was accused of intimidating women against speaking about sexual harassment while he was the chair of the board of Equal Education, specifically regarding allegations against Doron Isaacs. [29] Achmat has denied the claims, [30] while also publicly defending Isaacs, stating that he does not believe Isaacs is a sexual predator. Achmat denied threatening complainants but admitted that he had "spoken firmly to people who have spread rumours or allegations of sexual or other misconduct without evidence as fact or faith". [31] Achmat has also boasted about being feared by people in South African civil society. [32] In the same radio interview Achmat claimed that he had heard rumours that his interviewer had stolen money and suggested that one of Isaacs' accusers was not credible because she had been gang-raped as a volunteer. [33]
Achmat joined calls for a public inquiry into Equal Education's handling of allegations of sexual misconduct in the organisation. [34] Equal Education [35] appointed retired judge Kathleen Satchwell to head an inquiry into the allegations. The Satchwell inquiry found that the allegations against Achmat and Isaacs were baseless. [36] [37] [38] [39] Judge Satchwell likened the accusations to the "gutter journalism" of the Apartheid era in which "untested propaganda could rule the roost”. [40]
However, one member of Satchwell's three person inquiry, former United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Rashida Manjoo, dissented on the basis that she wished to take into considerations the anonymous allegations that were rejected by Satchwell. There was a total of 19 anonymous submissions through the Women's Legal Centre that were rejected by the commission. [41]
In 2020 Achmat became a director of Karoo Biosciences, which was a company established by Doron Isaacs. [42]
Achmat was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1990. [2] [4] [43] [8] In 2005 he had a heart attack, which his doctor said was unlikely to be caused by his HIV-positive status or treatment. He recovered sufficiently to return to his activism work. [44]
On 5 January 2008, Achmat married his partner and fellow activist Dalli Weyers at a ceremony in the Cape Town suburb of Lakeside. The ceremony was attended by then Mayor Helen Zille and presided over by his close friend Supreme Court of Appeal judge Edwin Cameron. [45] [46] The couple divorced amicably in June 2011. [47]
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki is a South African politician who served as the 2nd democratic president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress (ANC). Before that, he was deputy president under Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1999.
HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals).
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
Mantombazana "Manto" Edmie Tshabalala-Msimang OMSS was a South African politician. She was Deputy Minister of Justice from 1996 to 1999 and served as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2008 under President Thabo Mbeki. She also served as Minister in the Presidency under President Kgalema Motlanthe from September 2008 to May 2009.
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State of Denial is a 2003 documentary film about AIDS in Africa, produced and directed by Elaine Epstein. The film highlights the errors of President Mbeki's government, which insists that there isn't enough evidence to show that HIV causes AIDS and refuses vital life-saving drugs to their people because of unknown long-term risks. The film follows the stories of HIV positive Africans and activists as well as their careers, interspersed with the harrowing statistics of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It features various HIV positive patients coping with the disease in times when the use of ARV medicine was strongly discouraged by the South African government.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. It can be managed with treatment. Without treatment it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Effective treatment for HIV-positive people involves a life-long regimen of medicine to suppress the virus, making the viral load undetectable. There is no vaccine or cure for HIV. An HIV-positive person on treatment can expect to live a normal life, and die with the virus, not of it.
HIV/AIDS is one of the most serious health concerns in South Africa. South Africa has the highest number of people afflicted with HIV of any country, and the fourth-highest adult HIV prevalence rate, according to the 2019 United Nations statistics. About 8 million South Africans out of the 60 million population live with HIV.
Simon Tseko Nkoli was an anti-apartheid, gay rights and AIDS activist in South Africa. Active in the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), the United Democratic Front, and the Gay Association of South Africa (GASA), he was arrested as part of the Delmas Treason Trial in 1984. After his release in 1988, he founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW) and organized South Africa's first pride parade. His activism influenced the African National Congress (ANC) to enshrine gay rights in the South African constitution. One of the first South Africans to disclose that he was living with HIV/AIDS, Nkoli founded the Township AIDS Project. After his death from AIDS-related complications, his colleagues established the Treatment Action Campaign.
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Fig Trees is a 2009 Canadian operatic documentary film written and directed by John Greyson. It follows South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat and Canadian AIDS activist Tim McCaskell as they fight for access to treatment for HIV/AIDS. It was also inspired by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. The film premiered at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary.
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many people fear me for good reason