01 December 2009

New SAHA collection: The Zackie Achmat, Jack Lewis and Treatment Action Campaign Political Papers (AL3165)

Archived at SAHA as AL2446_4699This significant new collection consists of the political papers of Zackie Achmat, Jack Lewis and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).

Zackie Achmat and Jack Lewis were anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s and 1990s in South Africa, working in the greater Cape Town area with trade unions and community-based health organizations. This, together with their Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) activities, led to increased work on HIV/AIDS throughout the 1990s.

In December 1998 both Jack Lewis and Zackie Achmat helped found the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The TAC seeks to mobilise communities around issues of HIV/AIDS and access to treatment. The use of a combination of community-based activism and human-rights based legal strategies has largely characterized the activities of the TAC.

The collection consists of mostly documents, audiovisual and electronic material, and some posters. The collection is cross- referenced with related archival collections at the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) Archives.

View the collection