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Zackie Achmat |
Founder and chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the most well-known and successful AIDS activist group in South Africa, Achmat is committed to ensuring that HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence. In April 2001, TIME Magazine named Achmat its Person of the Week, citing his leadership in the "campaign to secure treatment for South Africa's 4.7 million HIV patients" and the "epic victory" that year "when 39 pharmaceutical companies withdrew a lawsuit to block South Africa from importing cheaper generic copies of patented AIDS drugs." Achmat's work, the magazine continued, raised "new hope for millions of AIDS sufferers throughout the developing world."
A hero to countless South Africans for his tireless efforts on their behalf, Achmat has never backed down from a fight. Born Abdurazzack Achmat in 1962, Achmat took his first direct action at age 14.
"It was 1976, and he felt fellow pupils at his 'coloured,' or mixed-race, school (where he was sent because of his Malaysian and Muslim roots) were not sufficiently supportive of the anti-apartheid education boycott spreading from the black townships around Johannesburg. So he set fire to the school and nobody went to classes," writes Chris McGreal of the UK-based Guardian in his 2008 profile on Achmat.
Repeatedly arrested or detained for his unrelenting commitment to social justice, Achmat spent 20 years fighting to end apartheid before focusing on gay and lesbian rights. As director of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, which he founded, Achmat and the organization "led the effort to include a clause in the 1996 South African constitution forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation," according to Africansuccess.org. Achmat's own HIV-positive diagnosis in the late 1990s further catapulted him into the growing AIDS crisis and led to the establishment of TAC in 1998.
An advocacy organization for increased access to treatment, care and support services for people living with HIV, and prevention of new HIV infections, TAC has been hailed by The New York Times as the "world's most effective AIDS group."
Achmat has also been recognized with numerous awards, including the inaugural Desmond Tutu Leadership Award, the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. An Ashoka Fellow, he was named one of TIMEeurope's "Heroes of 2003." A year later, he was voted 61st in the Top 100 Great South Africans and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Written by: Karen Gerboth
014-10
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