Treatment Action Campaign

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. TAC is aligned to but often critical of the ruling African National Congress.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was launched on 10 December 1998, International Human Rights Day. Zackie Achmat, whom The New Yorker calls "the most important dissident in the country since Nelson Mandela", joined with a group of ten other activists to found the group after anti-apartheid gay rights activist Simon Nkoli died from AIDS even as highly active antiretroviral therapy was available to wealthy South Africans. Shortly thereafter, prompted by the murder of HIV-positive activist Gugu Dlamini, HIV-positive and HIV-negative members of the new group began wearing the group's now-famous T-shirts with the words "HIV Positive" printed boldly in front, a strategy inspired by the apocryphal story of the Danish king wearing the yellow star marking Jews under Nazi occupation. Achmat also became famous for his pledge to not take antiretroviral medicines until all South Africans could obtain them.

Quickly outgrowing its start among a small group of Cape Town activists, a number of whom had political roots in the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC, TAC became a much more broadly based group, with chapters in many regions of the nation and a largely black and poor constituency. The group campaigns for greater access to HIV treatment for all South Africans by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments.

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