Dedicated activist Zackie Achmat has become well-known in South Africa for his commitment to helping Aids sufferers throughout the country, writes Catherine Boal    

The 41-year-old chairman of the Aids pressure group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), who is HIV positive himself, is perhaps best known for his refusal to take possibly life-saving antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) in protest at their exorbitant cost - at the time they could be bought for R4,500 per month.

Achmat believes treatment for Aids sufferers should be provided free by the state and has been consistently vocal about how limiting the provision of the drugs to only the wealthy is short-sighted and exacerbates the growing Aids crisis.

"It is morally wrong to be able to purchase life," he told gay and lesbian affairs website, the Mask. "That is exactly what is happening with HIV. Poor people are regarded as dispensable, because they cannot afford to pay for their medicines. We are not going to let our people continue dying, because there are medicines that save their lives and we are going to fight for them."

Around six million South Africans are HIV positive, 21,5% of the country's population.

Achmat and the TAC are struggling to raise awareness of the problem at a governmental level. Despite being a committed member of the ANC, Achmat has openly criticised President Thabo Mbeki for his reluctance to confirm that the Aids crisis is very much an ongoing problem in South Africa. The political activist believes that the main issue lies with the president's continued denial of Aids and the effect it is having on South Africa at every level.

He has been quoted as saying: "There is no decent word said in parliament about the deaths caused by Aids. We are proud about our 10 years of democracy, but if we want our next 10 years of democracy to be good, we need to wake up to Aids." Achmat brought the issue very much into the public consciousness with his courageous decision not to take the expensive ARVs and stuck to it despite pressure from friends, family and even former president Nelson Mandela.

The 41-year-old, who was born in Johannesburg but spent his childhood in a Muslim community in Cape Town, has since begun a course of the drugs which nowadays cost between R600 and R1,200 per month - proof, if any were needed, that the work carried out by the TAC has seen results. Achmat and his organisation have spent decades battling for the drugs to become freely available but it is not the first cause he has been heavily involved in, spending his early years as an anti-apartheid activist.

Achmat first became politically active at the tender age of 14, the year of the Soweto uprising, and was in and out of prison for the next seven years for actions against the apartheid regime. At the age of 21, he disappeared into hiding and only re-emerged in 1990 when he discovered he was HIV positive. Since then he has been doing his utmost to champion the cause of state healthcare for Aids sufferers and raise awareness of the issues involved.

Launched in December 1998, the TAC is based in five of eight provinces in South Africa and has around 10,000 members. The organisation is particularly active in discrediting the infamous physician, Dr Matthias Rath, for his promotion of vitamin supplements as a legitimate means of treating Aids and his abhorrent practice of experimenting on people with the disease.

Earlier this year, the TAC began a legal fight against Rath and his organisation, ‘the Dr Rath Foundation', to prevent them from claiming that the campaign group is merely a front for ARV-peddling pharmaceutical companies. Achmat and the TAC have also asked Mbeki to reconsider Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's position as Health Minister for her refusal to condemn Rath's activities.

As well as keeping busy with TAC activities, Achmat is also an active player in the COSATU ‘save jobs' coalition.

As a result of his many socially rewarding projects he has collected an impressive array of accreditations -  being named Time's hero of 2003, winning the Jonathan Mann award for global health and human rights (also in 2003) and being nominated together with the TAC for the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

At the time, Dr Eric Goemaere, head of Medecins Sans Frontieres' South African mission, said: "There could not be a better recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize than somebody who has...