Zackie Achmat, South Africa Directed by Jackson Gondo
In the early 2000s one in nine South Africans were living with HIV but even though treatments existed, millions of people couldn’t afford them. With HIV claiming the lives of hundreds of people each day in South Africa, pharmaceutical companies continued to demand an eye-watering $10,000 per patient, per year.
In response to this crisis, Nelson Mandela’s government passed a law that would allow it to import cheaper, generic drugs from other countries. Despite the urgent need to get medication to the millions who were living with HIV, big pharma companies decried Mandela’s life-saving act as “piracy” and opened a lawsuit against his government.
A huge global campaign led by activists inSouth Africa followed and activists eventually forced the pharmaceutical companies to drop the legal action. Big pharma’s ruthless response to those who sought to make life-saving medication freely available showed the lengths the industry would go to protect its obscene profits, sparking a movement against the industry that lives on until today.
Zackie Achmat is an activist, co-founder of the Treatment Action Campaign and independent candidate for 2024 parliamentary elections in South Africa.