Treatment Action Campaign- TAC

Context

Since 1998, Treatment Action Campaign- TAC has been working in 7 provinces (KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Freestate and Western Cape). Here, the organisation has focused in districts that implement government policies. The organisation currently works in 135 communities. Through community dialogue approach on HIV and AIDs, the organisation has learned that there are a number of political, social, economic and cultural factors which hinder the collective response towards the epidemic.
Website
www.tac.org.za
Area of Work
South Africa
Contact Person
Phillip Mokoena

Approaches to implementing Community monitoring/ accountability

  • TAC uses community mobilisation and education as part of a tool of building active citizenship in holding government accountable. This is done through a small cadre of community health advocates linked to TAC branches and health facilities.
  • Media advocacy: Media advocacy is used to expose government failure on service delivery and building pressure for social change in communities they serve.
  • Litigation: TAC uses litigation to hold accountable leaders, government or private institution, in fulfilling their constitutional obligations around access to health rights and protection of human right violations.
  • Through partnership with Community Media Trust, TAC provides capacity building to Community Based Organisations on advocacy tools and prevention and treatment literacy knowledge. The capacity building is expanded to 11 countries in the region where TAC conducts a regional training per year for regional partners.

Results and Lessons

  • TAC campaign around access to affordable HIV treatment and outreach education achieved major policy victories.  This include a massive scale-up of access to treatment in South Africa to more than 1.3 million people to-date.
  • Through such intensive and sustainable campaign, TAC built a strong civil society movement, which brought changes in people lives. As result, there are now other new organisations related to TAC focusing on quality education, social justice and access to sanitation in parts of the country.
  • Communities have been the soul driver of HIV response through encouraging change in behaviour and challenged some of the cultural norms in responding to the growth of the epidemic.
  • One of the major weaknesses is around communities resolving to extreme measure due to frustration of lack of accountability and corruption amongst government leaders and local authorities, which hinder service delivery.