Abstract
The Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) activism over the past decade within post-apartheid South African society has served as a successful example of the promotion of social change in order to combat the HIV epidemic. In this paper, I analyze TAC’s advocacy methods in light of Lucie White’s three dimensions of lawyering and advocate that TAC has fulfilled all three dimensions in promoting a new form of participatory citizenship centred on grassroots activism and self-empowerment.
Highlights
Sitting in the back of the car looking out at Cape Town’s picturesque landscape amidst ancient mountains, which undoubtedly served as witnesses to countless European incursions culminating in subsequent Dutch and British colonialism, I could not help but feel the curiosity of a young child, eager to learn of its surroundings in an unfamiliar setting
As our contact at Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was running behind schedule, our Projects Abroad Human Rights Office (PAHRO) guide, another PAHRO volunteer and I waited patiently in the crammed common area while gazing at volunteers hurrying throughout the office and simultaneously speaking about current initiatives and the day’s activities in a non-chalante, jovial demeanour not unknown to indigenous South Africans
As I proceed through the discussion, I will inject my own experiences from my summer 2010 fellowship in Cape Town with PAHRO in which I frequented TAC’s Khayelitsha office, worked with TAC representatives to conduct surveys in township clinics and researched TAC’s legal claims for a study elucidating inequalities in South Africa’s two-tiered healthcare system
Summary
Sitting in the back of the car looking out at Cape Town’s picturesque landscape amidst ancient mountains, which undoubtedly served as witnesses to countless European incursions culminating in subsequent Dutch and British colonialism, I could not help but feel the curiosity of a young child, eager to learn of its surroundings in an unfamiliar setting. I witnessed, in astonishment, endless waves of makeshift shacks, pieced together from spare metal and wood, standing awkwardly, inherently symbolizing their fragility It was the very phenomenon about which I had heard before landing in Cape Town, namely of the innumerable townships, home to South Africa’s historically marginalized black – and even at times white – communities, still recovering from the apartheid era. As our contact at TAC was running behind schedule, our PAHRO guide, another PAHRO volunteer and I waited patiently in the crammed common area while gazing at volunteers hurrying throughout the office and simultaneously speaking about current initiatives and the day’s activities in a non-chalante, jovial demeanour not unknown to indigenous South Africans In those fifteen minutes while waiting for the TAC employee, I learned what so many visitors from around the world had recognized about TAC. As I proceed through the discussion, I will inject my own experiences from my summer 2010 fellowship in Cape Town with PAHRO in which I frequented TAC’s Khayelitsha office, worked with TAC representatives to conduct surveys in township clinics and researched TAC’s legal claims for a study elucidating inequalities in South Africa’s two-tiered healthcare system
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