Zackie Achmat
He refused HIV medication until the government made it available to all – and helped force South Africa to provide treatment to millions.
Zackie Achmat grew up in a Muslim family in Johannesburg and Cape Town. At 14, during the 1976 uprising, he set fire to his school in protest against apartheid and was imprisoned several times as a teenager. He came out as gay and joined the anti-apartheid movement.
In 1994 he co-founded the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, which campaigned successfully for the protection of sexual orientation in the new constitution and, in 1998, for the abolition of the laws against sex between men.
In 1998, after the death of his fellow activist Simon Nkoli, Achmat co-founded the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). He was himself HIV-positive and publicly refused to take antiretroviral drugs until they were available to all South Africans through the public health system. At the time, President Thabo Mbeki’s government questioned the link between HIV and AIDS. The TAC’s protests and court cases, including a landmark Constitutional Court ruling in 2002, forced the government to provide treatment; South Africa now runs one of the largest HIV treatment programmes in the world.
Achmat has since campaigned for education, housing and social justice. In 2024 he stood as an independent candidate in the national elections.