Zackie Achmat to speak at conference!

[Guest guest]

NEWS FLASH !! Zackie Achmat, chair of the South African AIDS group

Treatment Action Campaign, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming

Global AIDS Action Conference!! A well-known and dedicated campaigner

for justice , a terrific speaker -- and lately profiled in Time

Magazine, the New Yorker and the New York Times

Register to attend this conference today!! 100 people have signed up

already, from Texas to Georgia...to Burundi and Cameroon!!

Info here: www.globalaidsalliance.org/conference.html

Note also that the hotel has lowered the rate to $125 a night -- and you

can share that with a roomate (we may be able to help you find a roomate

if you want), plus there are other housing options as well. See the

full range of options on our website!!

HERE IS HOW THE NY TIMES DESCRIBED ZACKIE:

The New York Times

Editorial Observer

January 13, 2003

A Hero Measured by the Advance of a Deadly Disease

By TINA ROSENBERG

South Africa, cursed with a history of causes worth dying for, is

blessed with men and women willing to die for them. To that list now

add Zackie Achmat. Mr. Achmat, 40, is South Africa's most prominent

AIDS activist, and chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign. He found

out that he was H.I.V. positive in 1990, and has had AIDS since 1997.

He can afford antiretroviral drugs, but in 1998 he vowed not to take

them until everyone in South Africa could. That day is inching closer,

largely due to the work of the campaign. For Mr. Achmat it may not

arrive soon enough.

Mandela has called him a role model, visited him at his house

and asked him to take his pills. " I'm an atheist, but he's my saint, "

Mr. Achmat said in a telephone interview from his Cape Town home. " You

don't want to refuse him anything. "

But he did refuse, unwilling to save his life while the drugs remained

too expensive for others. Mr. Achmat's decision, which was not known to

the public until last year, when journalists began to ask why he was so

sick, has gripped a country disillusioned with its all-too-human

leadership. Radio listeners call in to discuss whether he should take

medicine. " My grandmother is asking me, `When is Zackie going to take

his pills?' " says Berger, a researcher at Johannesburg's AIDS

Law Project.

South Africa has the highest official count of AIDS-infected people in

the world, with five million. One in five adults is infected. Each year

70,000 babies are born with H.I.V. The country should be engaged in a

national mobilization to stave off Armageddon. Instead, South Africans

are still arguing about whether H.I.V. causes the disease and whether

antiretrovirals are tonic or toxic.

President Thabo Mbeki and some of his aides have questioned H.I.V.'s

role in AIDS, minimized South Africa's problem and tried to cut the

AIDS budget. Government officials have accused those promoting AIDS

treatment of conspiring to slander and poison black people. While

constant criticism and the exploding AIDS epidemic have led Mr. Mbeki

to mute his views, his government is a long way from mounting the

energetic assault on AIDS that is possible and necessary in South

Africa.

In this climate, the case of Zackie Achmat cuts the fog. " People assume

that if he takes his pills, he'll be all right, " said Mr. Berger.

Even Mr. Achmat, who is of mixed race, acknowledges that he should be

taking antiretrovirals. He has been near death several times, and

continues to get infections easily. He cannot travel much and has

little energy to work. In addition, he says, conditions in South Africa

have changed. " We are so close, " he says. " The real hard work starts

now. "

The government is being dragged into saving its people, in no small

measure because of the Treatment Action Campaign, which is by all

accounts the largest and most effective AIDS group in the third world.

The campaign can mobilize thousands of people for protests and has

hundreds of activists who speak about AIDS treatment to labor and civic

groups. The group helped bring Cosatu, the powerful South African labor

federation, into the AIDS fight. It is an important source of

information to debunk the deniers' claims.

The campaign has also used South Africa's progressive new Constitution

to advantage. It sued the government to force it to provide

H.I.V.-positive mothers with nevirapine, which may save half the babies

born with H.I.V. Today South Africa has the world's largest program to

prevent mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V., although some

provincial governments are still resisting. Recently, government,

business, labor and civic organizations negotiated an AIDS plan that

includes treatment in South Africa's public health system, although the

government has still not signed on. If it does, says Mr. Achmat, he

will take his pills.

Mr. Mandela is one reason the government is changing. At first

reluctant to challenge Mr. Mbeki, his protege, and divide his party,

the African National Congress, Mr. Mandela is now photographed wearing

a T-shirt that says " HIV Positive, " the campaign's trademark. In July,

Mr. Mandela visited Mr. Achmat and met with other campaign members at

Mr. Achmat's home. When he emerged, he told reporters he would plead

the campaign's case for AIDS treatment with President Mbeki. Within a

week, he did.

The parallels between the campaign and the A.N.C. are haunting. The

campaign is one of the few organizations still wearing the A.N.C.'s

mantle of activism. Its leaders are using techniques they learned in

the anti-apartheid struggle. Mr. Achmat was jailed several times in the

1970's, and spent the 1980's living underground as an A.N.C. activist.

The campaign is fighting an evil even more formidable and deadly than

apartheid, and one that, absent universal access to AIDS treatment, is

just as selective in bringing most of the suffering down upon South

Africa's poor. " Almost everyone I meet tells me `take medicine,' but

also says this has made us think, " says Mr. Achmat. " The country is

realizing that people can actually buy life, and that this is

unacceptable. "

=============================================

Bryden

Global AIDS Alliance, Communications Director

1225 Connecticut Ave., NW #401

Washington, DC 20036

202-296-0260 ext 211

dbryden@...