Friends of the Treatment Action Campaign

Treatment Action Campaign “in less than five years of existence moved a nation, shifted government policy and advanced the rights of people with HIV everywhere in the world… TAC’s struggle grows out of the best traditions of the anti-apartheid movement. TAC will be a shining light for citizen action for decades to come.” - Graca Machel, on presenting TAC with the Nelson Mandela, Health and Human Rights Award in 2002

“There is simply no other group on the planet that so indomitably fought the fight against the virus, with such principled commitment, such ingenuity, such tenacity, and such success. TAC is revered by People Living With AIDS throughout the world.” - Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, 7 November, 2005

"The TAC is widely regarded as one of the most effective civil society organizations SA has. Without it, there might not be a government- sponsored antiretroviral roll-out, even an inadequate one – it was the TAC’s successful Constitutional Court challenge that forced government into taking action." - Business Day, 28 September, 2005

"With its tactical mix of using the legal system and building up a formidable generation of (largely young black) activists, the TAC is carrying the torch, doing what a caring state should be. Long may it survive and may it corral many more mouthpieces into its stable." - Mail and Guardian, 30 September, 2005

"The courts have forced the government into action... Some regional governments, especially in the provinces containing Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, have leapt at the chance to provide antiretrovirals, and that is mainly where people are being saved. The most important factor, however, is the Treatment Action Campaign, probably the world's most effective AIDS group. It was founded by Zackie Achmat, who chose not to take the antiretrovirals he needed until the government had agreed to make them available to all." - New York Times, 30 August, 2006