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Adam Levin

Levin, a South African author and journalist was diagnosed HIV positive in July 2003. As an anthropology graduate, he's key interests are African popular culture and fashion. He has travelled Africa in search of stories on these subjects and has published four books, three of which relate to his travels and interests. The fourth book, Aidsafari however is Levin's personal memoir of his journey with AIDS. Aidsafari was the 2006 joint winner, along with Edwin Cameron’s Witness to AIDS, of the Alan Paton Prize for non-fiction. Since the book’s publication, Levin often speaks on Aids awareness and living positively.
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Adeline Mangcu

1994 was a beautiful year for Adeline Mangcu; she had fallen in love, she had just become a school teacher and she had a beautiful baby girl. When her daughter’s health failed, however, Adeline was tested for HIV. After receiving her positive test results; on her way home, Adeline started disclosing her status. On the 30th of April 1999 Adeline was part of a Treatment Action Campaign delegation that met with the Minister of Health Dlamini-Zuma; having lost her child to AIDS, Adeline spoke about the need for a national PMTCT programme. Adeline currently works in the HIV/AIDS and Lifeskills Unit at the Western Cape Department of Education.
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Alida Wagener

Alida Wagener, a nurse in the North West Province, was infected from a needle stick injury that happened while trying to insert an intravenous drip into a psychotic patient; a patient with HIV psychosis. Alida is currently on antiretrovirals. Recently, she conceived and gave birth to an HIV negative baby. Alida’s husband is HIV negative.
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Allison Russell

Dr Allison Russell is a consultant physician in the AIDS clinic in Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. In 1998 she further developed the palliative care service available at the hospital.
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Andile Madondile

Soon after Madondile got the double diagnosis of tuberculosis and AIDS in 2004, his boss fired him and his girlfriend moved out, leaving him with both their leaky shack and their young daughter. At the time of his diagnosis his CD4 count was already, alarmingly, at 37. He would eventually, after working through his own denial and fear of the disease, start taking TB medication. 3 months later with a CD4 count of 9 Madondile started on antiretroviral medication. Madondile is currently the Treatment Action Campaign’s Western Cape Provincial Secretary and thanks to antiretrovirals has a new lease on life.
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Andrew Boulle

Boulle, a public health specialist with interests in HIV observational studies, modelling, monitoring and evaluation, and information systems has participated in a range of studies linked to the Khayelitsha HIV treatment programme. In March 2005, infuriated by the Rath Foundation’s misleading and intentional obfuscation of the benefits of antiretroviral treatment, Boulle compiled a letter to the Department of Health. He then got numerous clinicians at various ART roll-out sites across the Western Cape to sign it in the hope that the letter would convince the Health Department to take action against the illegal activities undertaken by Rath.
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Anneke Meerkotter

After completing her B.Proc and LLB degrees at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Meerkotter was employed at the Community Law Centre at UWC in both the Gender and Children’s Rights Projects. Here her work focused on child justice and reproductive rights and the rights of commercial sex workers. She then practiced as an attorney at the Aids Law Project before joining the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre (TLAC) in 2006. Meerkotter was also a member of the Law and Human Rights Working Group of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).
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Antoinette Fouché

Fouché tested for HIV in 1995 after her partner, Jaco, was diagnosed HIV positive. Antoinette and Jaco, both Afrikaans, have disclosed that they are both HIV positive to various groups on numerous occasions. As founders of the Metropolitan Edu-AIDS Project they are committed to the education and dissemination of AIDS information to the public at large. Both are qualified HIV/AIDS educators and life-skills trainers. Antoinette and Jaco have also fostered abandoned or abused children. Antoinette was a member of the Beat It! team for the 2000 and 2002 series.
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Aphiwe & Simphiwe Bitsha

Aphiwe and Simphiwe Bitsha are twins. When Aphiwe fell sick in the Eastern Cape, their mother Bulelwa moved to Cape Town and took the twins to a doctor in Belleville. The doctor suggested that Aphiwe be tested for HIV, when the results came back they tested Simphiwe too. The twins were both HIV positive and had been infected through mother to child transmission. They commenced ARV treatment soon after that because of low CD4 counts; Aphiwe’s was 198 and Simphiwe’s was 143. Since starting treatment in November 2005 the twins health has seen an about turn for the better.
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Arthur Chaskalson

Chaskalson graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with an LLB cum laude in 1954. In 1963, he, along with Bram Fischer, Joel Joffe and George Bizos, was part of Nelson Mandela's defence team in the Rivonia Trial. In 1978 he helped establish the Legal Resources Centre. He was its director from November 1978 until September 1993, and was leading counsel in several cases challenging apartheid laws. In June 1994 President Mandela appointed Chaskalson the first president of South Africa's new Constitutional Court. On 22 November 2001 he became the Chief Justice of South Africa.
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Babalwa Tembani

Babalwa Tembani is an HIV positive learner living in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape. Babalwa is involved in support groups for learners living with HIV and she disclosed her status to show that young people are also at risk of contracting HIV.
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Barack Obama

Obama earned his law degree at Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the 3rd African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate. On February, 10, 2007 Senator Obama announced his candidacy for the President of the United States of America. Running on a message of change Obama was elected as the 44th President of America on November 4, 2008.
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Barbara Hogan

Hogan joined the ANC after it was banned in the aftermath of the 1976 Uprisings. She was detained in 1982 and, after being interrogated and held in solitary confinement for a year, she was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to ten years in prison. With the unbanning of the ANC she was released. An MP since 1994, she held the chair of the Portfolio Committee for Finance until her continued and unwavering support of the science of HIV/AIDS resulted in Thabo Mbeki sacking her. Her principled stand however led to her being appointed as the Minister of Health after Mbeki was asked to resign by the ANC NEC in September 2008. She is now the Minister of Public Enterprises.
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Benjamin Borrageiro

Benjamin Borrageiro talked openly about how crack cocaine contributed to a lack of inhibitions in his life and how that ultimately led to his infection with HIV. A gay man, Borrageiro was a DJ for 26 years, had his own nightclub and later opened up and ran an escort agency for gay men and men who have sex with men. A few months prior to him succumbing to AIDS related illnesses in 2000 Borrageiro spoke about discrimination; he had this to say: “They take away that feeling of humanity, and when you take away that feeling of humanity you take away worth, life’s worth. And when that happens, you lose the will to live.”
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Blade Nzimande

Dr Blade Nzimande has been the General-Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) since 1998. Having obtained his PhD from the University of Natal in Sociology Nzimande has lectured Sociology at both the University of Natal and the University of Zululand. Above having held Council Member chairs at various South African tertiary institutions Nzimande has been a Member of Parliament and was recently elected to the ANC’s National Executive Committee.
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Bongiwe Mkhutyukelwa

In August 2001 Bongiwe Mkhutyukelwa signed a supporting affidavit for the Treatment Action Campaign’s prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission (PMTCT) court case against Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Having tested for HIV in 1999 while she was pregnant, Mkhutyukelwa was informed about a PMTCT pilot programme. In the affidavit she could say that her child had tested HIV negative at nine and at eighteen months thanks to this pilot programme. Mkhutyukelwa was a Beat It! support group member in the 2002 series.
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Bonile Peter

On the 17th of May 2001 Bonile Peter was diagnosed HIV positive. He tested despite not having had any ailments or opportunistic infections. Born in Ladyfrere in the Eastern Cape, Peter moved to Cape Town in his grade 10 year. After testing positive he began to work for the Treatment Action Campaign as a trained lay counsellor. Peter has been working at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) since April 2002 where he facilitates the HIV support groups and is available for individual supportive counselling. He recently began studying psychology a UWC.
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Busisiwe Maqungo

Maqungo was diagnosed with HIV in 1999 after the birth of her child, Nomazizi. When she lost her baby to AIDS she met with volunteers of MSF. She then became active in promoting the rights of women and children living with HIV/AIDS. She went on to sign an affidavit to force the South African Government to provide ARVs to pregnant women to prevent mother to child transmission. Through the PMTCT programme, she has had another child, Luthando, who is HIV negative. Along with TAC compatriot, Pholokgolo Ramothwala, she accepted the 2001 MTV Free Your Mind Award on behalf of TAC for its efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
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Charlene Smith

Charlene Smith, an award winning and prolific journalist, was raped and stabbed in her home in 1999 and has since become an internationally recognised expert on sexual violence and post-exposure prophylaxis. A freelance writer, author, television documentary maker, media trainer and consultant Smith’s numerous talents has resulted in her making an outstanding contribution to South Africa in the field of HIV/AIDS and sexual violence.
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Chris van Heerden

Van Heerden found out about his HIV status in a doctors waiting room in front of 20 other patients. The doctor had simply walked out and said: “Mr van Heerden, got your results, you’re HIV positive.” “Next.” In 1997 he started accessing antiretrovirals on a clinical trial. Before he started the trial his CD4 count was 124 and by the time he appeared on Beat It! in 2000 it had gone up to 525. Having suffered from psoriasis he had no more hair on his body, no finger nails or toe nails. When he started treatment all those signs disappeared along with his arthritis. His hair started to grow back and so did his nails.
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Christopher Moraka

On the 9th of May 2000 Christopher Moraka along with other TAC volunteers gave evidence at a special parliamentary hearing on pharmaceutical pricing. Two months later on the 27th of July Moraka, who had died of severe oral thrush and immune suppression caused by AIDS, was buried in Nyanga, Cape Town. Access to the anti-fungal drug fluconazole may have saved his life. In remembrance of Moraka and to prevent others from facing the pain and suffering that he had faced, TAC launched the Christopher Moraka Defiance Campaign against Patent Abuse on the 17th of August 2000.
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Clem Sunter

Sunter spent most of his career in the Gold and Uranium Division of the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, serving as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from 1990 to 1996. At the time it was the largest gold producer in the world. He has recently been the Chairman of the Anglo American Chairman's Fund, which in a recent survey was rated the premier corporate social responsibility fund in South Africa.
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Corné Fourie

In 1999 Corné Fourie was diagnosed HIV positive. In jail at the time, serving a five year prison sentence for car theft, Fourie received no counselling to help him come to terms with his HIV status. Having tested HIV negative in the first four years of his sentence, Fourie was infected after having formed a relationship with another inmate. On his release in August 2000 he immediately sought help to come to terms with his HIV positive status and in 2002 he became a member of the Beat It! support group.
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Desmond Tutu

Tutu is a cleric and an activist who became internationally renowned during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. In 1984, he became the second South African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Elected and ordained as the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, Tutu would go on to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His policy of forgiveness and reconciliation has become an international example of conflict resolution, and a trusted method of post-conflict reconstruction. He continues to pursue an active international ministry for peace.
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Edna Bokaba

Sister Edna Bokaba is currently both a Gauteng Aids Council member and an executive committee member of the Society of Midwives of South Africa. At the Treatment Action Campaign’s second national congress in July 2003 she was also elected as the organisation’s Health Care Workers Representative. Prior to that on the 19th of November 2001, she was one of the individuals that undersigned the Bredell Consensus on the Imperative to Expand Access to Antiretroviral (ART) Medicines for Adults and Children with HIV/AIDS in South Africa
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Edward Mabunda

Edward Mabunda, TAC activst, father and poet, succumbed to AIDS on the 9th April 2003. His death would have been avoided had he had access to antiretrovirals. Edward Mabunda and Charlene Wilson had both requested to be buried at public funerals to raise awareness over HIV/AIDS related deaths caused by the poor role out of ARVs.
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Edwin Cameron

On the 23rd of April 1999 Justice Cameron disclosed his HIV status to the Judicial Services Commission. Having started practice at the Johannesburg Bar in 1983, and from 1986 conducted a human rights practice from the University of the Witwatersrand, he was awarded a personal professorship in law in 1989. His practice included defence of ANC fighters charged with treason; conscientious and religious objection; forced removals; and gay and lesbian equality. He was awarded the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Right’s in 2000. He was appointed to the Constitutional Court on the 31st Dec 2008.
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Eric Goemaere

Dr Goemaere is head of Medecins Sans Frontieres in South Africa and a leading AIDS activist. To answer the government's objections to antiretroviral therapy; that they are to expensive or that they are toxic, Goemaere’s leadership led to MSF importing less costly generic ARVs into South Africa and initiating programmes to help patients take them as directed. The results proved government wrong. 92% of the mostly terminal-stage patients in the program ended up with undetectable levels of HIV and a new lease on life. Goemaere received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town in June 2008.
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Ezio Baraldi

Dr Ezio Baraldi of the AIDS Treatment Centre in Tshwane specialises in HIV/AIDS and sexual health. Baraldi is the president of the Southern African Sexual Health Association. He contributed to the first two series of Beat It! broadcast by making ARV related information accessible to the viewers.
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Faghmeda Miller

Diagnosed in 1994 after losing her husband to AIDS, Faghmeda Miller became the first and only South African Muslim woman to disclose her HIV positive status publicly. As a convener of Positive Muslims, an awareness-raising and support group for Muslims living with HIV/AIDS in Cape Town, Faghmeda constantly advocates for openness, acceptance and access to information around HIV/AIDS in the Muslim community. Recently she was nominated as “Woman of the Year” by a national South African magazine. Faghmeda was involved with Beat It! broadcast in the programme’s first three series.
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Fanie De Villiers

De Villiers is an English and Afrikaans speaker, who lives in Durbanville, Cape Town. A haemophiliac, De Villiers was likely to have been infected through a bad blood transfusion at the age of five or six. When he turned 15 his parents were convinced that he was going to die. He started taking ARVs then, in the late 1990s, and they saved his life. At first he had a lot of side effects, but today he is coping well. De Villiers’ wife from his first marriage, who was HIV negative, passed away from cancer in 2007. He has found love again though, and the serodiscordant couple recently got married.
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Fareeda Abrahams

Abrahams passed away from HIV/AIDS related illnesses a week before World AIDS Day in 2000. She appeared in the 2000 series of Beat It! along with her sisters Washiela and Mashnoona. They spoke about the benefits of disclosing to family but also about the strain that an AIDS sick person can put on a family especially when treatment isn’t available and the public healthcare sector is apathetic too the suffering of the AIDS sick. In the insert Mashnoona had this to say to President Mbeki: “Sir, I am pleading, this disease has broken our family apart … what we need from you is openness, and a bit more money for the drugs that can help the people."
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Faried Abdullah

Dr Faried Abdullah was the Western Cape Department of Health’s Deputy Director General for ten years. In this position he managed a large programme that has helped reduce mother-to-child transmission in the province. He also managed an antiretroviral treatment programme that, with support from a Global Fund grant reached over 60% of people living with HIV in need of treatment. In December 2005 Dr Abdullah was appointed as the head of the International HIV/AIDS Alliances’ Technical Support Department.
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Fatima Hassan

Hassan is a senior attorney and former deputy head of the AIDS Law Project (ALP). In 2000 she joined the Constitutional Court of South Africa for a year to complete a research clerkship with Justice O’Regan. She was awarded the Franklin Thomas Fellowship by the Constitutional Court to pursue an LLM at Duke University, which she completed in 2002. Back in South Africa she continued to work for the ALP. She was the attorney of record in several key cases against government, big business and pharmaceutical companies. In 2008 she was appointed as an adviser to the new Minister of Health Barbara Hogan.
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Festus Mogae

Festus Mogae was awarded the AIDS Leadership Award by the Harvard AIDS Institute in 2001 while he was President of Botswana. Mogae was the president from 1998 to 2008. He succeeded Quett Masire as President in 1998, and was reelected in October 2004; in 2008 he stepped down and was succeeded by Ian Khama. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on March 20, 2008 for his "exemplary leadership" in making Botswana a "model" of democracy and good governance.
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Gail Johnson

Gail Johnson was the foster mother to Nkosi Johnson, who passed away from AIDS in 2001 at the age of 12. Johnson and Nkosi came to public attention in 1997, when a primary school in Johannesburg refused to accept Nkosi as a pupil because of his status. They challenged this refusal and rightly allowed the incident to cause a furore at the highest political level. The school later reversed its decision and an HIV/AIDS School Policy was developed nationally. Johnson with Nkosi’s advice also founded a children’s home and haven in Johannesburg of which she is the director called Nkosi's Haven.
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Geoff Budlender

Budlender is one of SA's finest human-rights lawyers. In the mid-70s he was part of a legal team that successfully defended Nusas leaders against terrorism charges. He joined the Legal Resources Centre under Arthur Chaskalson (the former chief justice) and grew it into an institution that effectively defended victims of apartheid's human-rights abuses. Budlender was the lawyer responsible for curtailing the effects of the influx control laws in the Komani case. He dedicated himself to public-interest law and earned a reputation as a fierce and independent defender of the rights of the poor and oppressed.
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George Bizos

Bizos was appointed by then President Mandela to the Judicial Services Commission to recommend candidates for Judicial office and reforms to the Judicial System to erase its apartheid past. Bizos was counsel to Nelson Mandela since the mid-fifties and was part of the team that defended him, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others in the Rivonia Trial (1963-4). He also defended women like Albertina Sisulu and Barbara Hogan, particularly those who defied the carrying of passes from the mid-fifties. He was an advisor in the drawing up of the Interim Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights.
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Gilbert Marcus

Gilbert Marcus is a senior advocate at the Johannesburg Bar and a specialist in human rights and constitutioal law. He is one of the country's most respected advocates and has represented clients in some of the country's seminal political trails under apartheid, as well as in path-breaking Constitutional Court cases.
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Glenda Gray

In 2002, South African paediatrician Prof. Glenda Gray won the 2002 Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. Gray along with her colleague James McIntyre has spent over ten years developing Africa’s premiere clinical trial site; the Perinatal HIV Research Unit located at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Gray has led the field in testing interventions to prevent mother-to-child-transmission, including the South African Intrapartum Nevirapine Study (SAINT). Her research also extends to providing in-depth documentation of women’s life experiences, including early age of first sexual experience and high levels of sexual abuse.
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Graça Machel

Machel is an international advocate for women’s and children’s rights and has been a social and political activist for decades. In 1994, the UN Secretary General appointed her as an independent expert to carry out an assessment of the impact of armed conflict on children. Her groundbreaking report was presented in 1996 and established a new and innovative agenda for the comprehensive protection of children caught up in war. Machel is the wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela and the widow of the late Mozambican president Samora Machel, who died in 1986.
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Gregg Gonsalves

An AIDS activist for 17 years, Gonsalves, having being diagnosed positive in 1995, is currently based in Cape Town where he coordinates regional treatment literacy and advocacy programs for the AIDS and Rights Alliance of Southern Africa. He was a founding member of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition. Formerly Director of Treatment and Prevention Advocacy for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Gonsalves was also a co-founder of the Treatment Action Group. Prior to that, he was a member of the Boston and New York chapters of ACT UP.
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Gugu Dlamini

1961 – December 1998 In December 1998 Gugu Dlamini was murdered because of her HIV positive status. From KwaMashu, a township on the outskirts of Durban, she had publicly disclosed her HIV status on World AIDS Day. After her disclosure, Dlamini was accused of shaming her community and was repeatedly assaulted and threatened. Her calls for police assistance went unheeded. Three weeks later, she was fatally assaulted. Her perpetrators sent a message to her boyfriend saying: “You can come fetch your dog. We are finished with her.” These perpetrators were never found, charged or convicted.
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Hermann Reuter

Dr Hermann Reuter (affectionately known as Dr Themba), a Medecins Sans Frontieres doctor, oversaw the provision of antiretroviral treatment in one of the remotest areas in the country. This was achieved against all the odds associated with poverty in the community; poor infrastructure and lack of adequate staffing. As project coordinator of the HIV programme in Lusikisiki, Dr Reuter ensured that 2200 people were on ARV treatment in Lusikisiki by the end of 2006, when the project was handed over to the Eastern Cape Department of Health and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Dr Reuter is currently working for MSF in Ethiopia.
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Irene Grootboom

In 2000 Irene Grootboom brought an application to court on behalf of 510 children and 290 adults living in deplorable conditions in Wallacedene, demanding better housing. The benchmark judgment declared that the state was obliged to devise and implement "a comprehensive and co-ordinated programme to realise the right of access to adequate housing". She passed away in July 2008. The saddest thing is that, having won one of the most important legal victories in South African history and having established the Constitution’s relationship with the people, her fate did not improve.
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Ishmael Mduduzi Ngozo Mclean

Mclean, originally from Swaziland, contracted HIV when he was gang raped in Soweto at a street bash party. His HIV positive test results where hard to come to terms with until he was introduced to The Equality Project, and organisation that did advocacy work for the LGBT community. From there doors opened for Mclean and he was eventually employed as a journalist at the online resource for the LGBT community called Behind the Mask. Ishmael has been in a relationship with his HIV negative partner, Cyprian Thabata, for a few years.
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Jack Lewis

Jack was politically active from an early age. At 21 he was banned for five years in 1976 by the apartheid government while a student at Rhodes University. In the 1980s he was politically active in the anti-apartheid movement. He initiated NGOs providing community health services, education support and post-school vocational training. From 1985 to 1993 he lectured political economy at UWC. In 1993 he left to form Idol Pictures where he continued his exploration of historical and contemporary issues in development, education and culture for a mass television audience. Jack is the co-creator/director of Siyayinqoba Beat It!
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Jady Grasland

Jady Grasland, born in 1996, lives with her foster mother Daisy in Maraisburg, Johannesburg. Jady, in grade 1 in 2000, was teased relentlessly by other children on the play ground because she had disfiguring facial warts. Despite numerous attempts to remove these warts nothing worked until Jady commenced antiretroviral treatment. Jady enjoys her mathematics lessons at school.
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James McIntyre

Prof. James McIntyre is the co-founder, along with Prof. Glenda Gray, of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, the largest HIV clinical research centre in South Africa located at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. He is acknowledged as a world expert on mother-to-child-transmission of HIV. Over and above numerous publications he also advises UNICEF on strategies to prevent MTCT in Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe. McIntyre is also a consultant to the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS.
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Jason Wessenaar

Wessenaar is a TB/HIV activist and has been involved in the HIV/AIDS field since 1994. He has worked as a trainer/facilitator in various private and public organisations. He lectures at the Tshwane University of Technology, University of Stellenbosch and UNISA on HIV/AIDS workplace policy and programme development. Currently based at the Centre for the Study of HIV/AIDS at the Tshwane University of Technology, Wessenaar was the presenter in the Siyayinqoba Beat It! 2005 series.
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Jerry Coovadia

Prof. Jerry Coovadia was a Professor in and head of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of KwaZulu Natal from 1990 to 2000. During his career Coovadia received two Honorary Doctorates and was also awarded the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.
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Johann Kriegler

Kriegler was called to the Johannesburg Bar in 1959, during his years at the Bar he was actively involved in the promotion of human rights and the development of institutions for their defence. He drafted the constitution of the Christian Institute, became the national president of Verligte Aksie, was the founding chairperson of Lawyers for Human Rights and a founding trustee of the Legal Resources Centre. In December 1993 he was appointed chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, whose task it was to deliver South Africa's first elections based on universal adult suffrage. Kriegler was a Constitutional Court judge from 1994 to 2003.
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John Vollenhoven

John Vollenhoven, affectionately known as Uncle John, sees himself as a role model for the coloured Afrikaans speaking community, where HIV positive people are particularly isolated by the stigma and fear of HIV/AIDS. Vollenhoven was a long distance truck driver but lost his job after 21 years when opportunistic infections began to impact on his work. He now works with a community organisation that helps develop vegetable gardens in impoverished communities. Vollenhoven became a Siyayinqoba Beat It! support group member in 2004.
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Jonathan Berger

Jonathan Berger is a senior researcher and the head of policy & research at the AIDS Law Project where he has been working since 2002. With a particular interest in access to medicines, he focuses much of his research on exploring ways in which the law can be used to ensure that affordable medicines of proven quality, safety and efficacy reach the market. His other research areas include access to health care services, constitutional constraints on the exercise of public power and the relationship between law and social justice. Berger earned his first law degree in 1998.
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Joyce and Caroline Kepe

Joyce Kepe and her daughter Caroline live in Mbekweni, Paarl, in the Western Cape. Both mother and daughter are HIV positive. Because of Caroline’s HIV positive status Joyce is unable to work because she has to look after her daughter and make sure that she takes her medicines correctly. For this reason Joyce accesses both the Child Support Grant and a Care and Dependency Grant. Since accessing these grants both Joyce and Caroline’s lives have improved substantially and Caroline’s health has improved too.
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Joyce Kadi and Jerry Sebote

Joyce Kadi and Jerry Sebote are a happy married couple. Their serodiscordant relationship – Kadi is HIV positive and Sebote isn’t – doesn’t mean that they can’t have and enjoy a healthy sex life.
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Julia Kim

Dr Julia Kim, a physician and public health specialist, is a senior researcher at Rapid Action Deployment of Aids Research (RADAR) which is a joint venture between the School of Public Health at the University of Witwatersrand and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr Kim’s research currently focuses on the Intervention with Microfinance for Aids and Gender Equity Programme, an initiative that combines a poverty-alleviation programme with gender and HIV training in order to empower rural women and their communities to tackle both gender based violence and HIV/AIDS.
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Khabzela

12 December 1968 – 14 January 2004 Fana Khaba, aka DJ Khabzela, disclosed his HIV positive status publicly on the popular youth radio station, Yfm in May 2003. Khabzela the host of the most popular show on the station chose however not to take antiretrovirals once his HIV had progressed to full blown AIDS. Instead he opted for various other unproven remedies (supported by the South African Minister of Health) that would hold no benefits for his ailing health. He passed away on the 14th of January 2004 at the age of 35 after having endured immense pain and suffering.
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Khensani Mavasa

In 2006 Khensani Mavasa was the first openly HIV positive person to address the United Nations’ General Assembly and all its member states. Speaking during the UN General Assembly’s Special Session on HIV/AIDS she called on all African leaders to protect and promote the human rights of all people and vulnerable groups, particularly women and girls. The Deputy Chair of the Treatment Action Campaign at the time, Mavasa also stated emphatically that none of the 900 people who would die in South Africa that day deserved to die.
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Lihle Dlamini

In August 2003 Lihle Dlamini’s CD4 count was 91 and her viral load was 200 000. She immediately went onto antiretroviral treatment. Three years later, in 2006, Dlamini’s CD4 count was 655 and her viral load was undetectable. In 2004 Dlamini became one of eight support group members in the Siyayinoba Beat It! broadcast series. Later she would become the presenter of CHMT’s Siyayinqoba Beat It! non-broadcast Treatment Literacy Series. Dlamini married her HIV negative partner, Mandla Ngcoya, in 2006.
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Linda Mafu

Mafu grew up in the township of Gugulethu. At the age of eight her molestation at the hand of a 24 year old family friend started. Telling her parents did not help because even at that age the burden of proof lay with her, the victim. Despite being raped twice a week for the next few years Mafu hit back and got involved in the political struggle for a non-racial and non-sexist democracy. Later she joined the Treatment Action Campaign where she was first the Treatment Literacy Co-ordinator in the Eastern Cape and then the National Organiser. Mafu is currently the Executive Director of Amnesty International South Africa.
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Linda Pindani

In September 2000 Linda Pindani, a high school learner at the time, was diagnosed as HIV positive. According to Pindani he was likely to have been infected at the age of fifteen at a party, where he and his friends got drunk and slept with multiple girls without using protection. Since his diagnosis Pindani has argued for condoms to be made available in schools across the country. In the 2004 series of Siyayinqoba Beat It! Pindani, a young man entering into manhood who had also progressed to stage four of the disease, shared his experiences of his traditional Xhosa circumcision ceremony with the viewers.
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Linda-Gail Bekker

Dr Linda-Gail Bekker is a physician who is currently completing her PhD as a Fogharty Fellow at Rockefeller and Columbia Universities in New York. She co-ordinates the Sizophila Project and community interaction. Her research interests include the host response to tuberculosis (TB) infection. She was extensively involved with the Diana Princess of Wales HIV Research Foundation and its clinical trials of antiretroviral medication in Somerset West in the Western Cape. Bekker is currently the editor of the Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine.
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Loon Gangte

HIV-positive activist Loon Gangte, President of the Dehli Network of Positive People, found out that he was HIV positive while he was in drug rehabilitation in 1997. Within months he started speaking out about his status. For Gangte his HIV status was life saving because according to him, if he hadn’t learnt of his HIV status in 1997 his drug addiction would have cost him his life by now. Instead of drugs he chose life, treatment, and activism. Gangte maintains that his work is not about treatment or activism but about saving people’s lives.
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Loretta Jacobus

A member of the National Assembly since 2004 Jacobus was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Correctional Services on the 2nd of February 2006. In her position as Deputy Minister she had been tasked by the Minister, Ngconde Balfour, to negotiate an agreement on the Westville Prison case and a plan for prisons across the country. After an agreement with the AIDS Law Project and the Treatment Action Campaign was reached, mysteriously, Minister Balfour and the Director-general of Health blocked this agreement. It remains stalled. Prisoners in Westville and most other prisons continue to die in large numbers.
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Lorna Mlofana

On the 13th of December 2003, Lorna Mlofana from Town 2 in Khayelitsha was sexually assaulted; and then murdered when her rapist learnt that she had HIV. Mlofana, a mother and a community educator, was raped and killed in the toilet of a local shebeen. TAC immediately took it upon itself to ensure Lorna's killers were brought to justice. TAC sent out a clear message that as an organisation, made up largely of poor and unemployed women, they would mobilise their resources to hold the criminal justice system accountable and ensure that the people responsible were convicted. On the 16th of February 2006 the Cape High Court sentenced the accused.
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Lynette Denny

As an Associate Professor and Senior Specialist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town, Denny has as one of her core responsibilities the teaching of under and post graduate medical and nursing students. She also provides training to registrars, including specialist training in fields such as colpocopy, chemotherapy, gynae-cancer surgery and the management of rape survivors. She has conducted extensive research into cervical cancer prevention in low-resource settings, cervical cancer prevention in HIV positive women as well as the management of rape survivors.
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Malegapuru Makgoba

Prof. Malegapuru Makgoba was the head of the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) between 1999 and 2002 and was involved in developing South Africa's AIDS strategy and the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI). While at the Medical Research Council he received strong media and civil society support for publicly opposing the AIDS denialism of South African President Thabo Mbeki. Since 2004 he has been the Principal and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of KwaZulu Natal.
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Mama Darlina Tyawana

Mama Darlina Tyawana is a steering committee member of the Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS). She is a principled advocate for social change and human rights. Over and above her tireless advocacy work she is also a DOT (Directly Observed Treatment) supporter in her local community.
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Mandla Majola

Majola, who lives in Gugulethu, Cape Town is currently the Khayelitsha District Organiser for the Treatment Action Campaign. Having been an active member of the TAC since late 1999 Majola has served as a volunteer, Western Cape Co-ordinator and National Organiser. In 2003, he was elected National Secretary of the TAC, he resigned from this position however to concentrate on organising within the organisation. As an organiser he has co-ordinated numerous TAC events and most major marches that have taken place in the Western Cape.
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Mangosuthu Buthelezi

In 1972 Dr Buthelezi became Chief Executive Councillor to the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly and from 1976 to April 1994 was the Chief Minister of KwaZulu. He is also the President of the Inkatha Freedom Party and has been since it was founded in 1975. In April 1994, Dr Buthelezi became the Republic of South Africa’s Minister of Home Affairs and was appointed as Acting President many times during this tenure. On the 4th of May 2004 Buthelezi announced that his son Prince Nelisuzulu had succumbed to AIDS.
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Manto Tshabalala-Msimang

Tshabalala-Msimang was appointed the Health Minister in June 1999, and has presided over the most controversial public health response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in history. Renowned for her alignments with AIDS dissidents and for her championing of quack cures and nutritional ‘remedies’ for HIV, while maligning the efficacy of ARVs, the Health Minister became the primary enemy of the HIV treatment access movement in South Africa, and was publicly lampooned for her gross (and some argue, criminal) negligence. She was replaced as the Minister of Health in September 2008.
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Marc Lottering

Having grown up in Retreat, Marc Lottering is known as Cape Town’s funny man. A VITA award winner, comedian Marc has audiences in stitches with his portrayal of people and life on the Cape Flats and in South Africa generally. His ability to make South Africans laugh about things that are inherently South African speaks of his ability to surmise what affects, drives, infuriates and entertains us. Marc’s commitment to community is borne from this ability and is made evident in his contribution to the first series of Beat It! broadcast.
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Maria and Lebogang Nevirapine Hadebe

Maria Hadebe, as a TAC activist, had fought long and hard for the roll-out of a mother-to-child prevention programme nationally. Having experienced first hand the heartache and pain the absence of such a programme could have - Maria lost her first born child to AIDS - she was a tireless activist on this issue. Fortunately when she later fell pregnant again the Nevirapine programme, that had been introduced due to her and others like her's tireless work, meant that Maria's second child Lebogang Nevirapine Hadebe did not become infected with the HI virus. She chose to name her new born baby boy Nevirapine because Nevirapine worked for her child.
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Marius Thomas

Marius Thomas was a Beat It! Support Group member in the 2000 series. Originally from a rural community in the Western Cape, the Afrikaans speaking Thomas is openly gay and HIV positive.
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Mark Heywood

Heywood joined the AIDS Law Project in 1994, becoming project head in 1997. He has written numerous articles on AIDS, the law and human rights, and is a co-editor of HIV/AIDS and the Law. He assisted with the drafting of key human rights documents such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Code on HIV/AIDS and Employment and the United Nations International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. He was a National Executive member of the TAC for numerous years but stepped down in 2008 in order for him to focus on his job ahead as the Deputy Chair of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).
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Mary Smith

Smith from Atlantis in the Western Cape tested positive for HIV after her husband fell sick, tested positive for HIV and passed away two days later. Her husband had been a long-distance truck driver before falling ill. At first, after her husband’s funeral Smith fell in to a two year long depression. She eventually emerged stronger and more determined after joining an HIV support group.
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Mathew Damane

On the 12th of December 2002 Mathew Damane, who was diagnosed HIV positive in 1997, handed an HIV Positive t-shirt to former President Nelson Mandela who was visiting the MSF ARV clinic in Khayelitsha. Mandela immediately put the t-shirt on. In 2001, with a CD4 count of 138 and a viral load of 95 000, Damane started taking antiretroviral drugs supplied by the MSF program. Since September 2001 his viral load has been undetectable. Damane was a Beat It! Support Group member in the 2002 series.
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Matthias Rath

Rath is the definitive charlatan. Armed with huge amounts of money, megalomania, a lack of conscience and most importantly, the support of South Africa's incompetent Minister of Health, Rath has sown confusion in South Africa about the treatment and prevention of HIV. On the 13th of June 2008 the Cape High Court however handed down a landmark judgment in a court action initiated by TAC and the South African Medical Association against Rath and the Government of South Africa. The judgment effectively interdicts Rath from conducting unauthorised clinical trials and from plying his drugs as a suitable treatment for HIV in South Africa.
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Mazibuko Jara

Mazibuko Jara is a former member of the Cape Town District Executive Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP). He is an activist and researcher in human rights, HIV/AIDS, lesbian and gay equality, community development, promotion of co-operatives, alternative economic transformation, and land and agrarian reform.
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Mercy Makhalemele

Winner of the 2004 Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, Mercy Makhalemele was one of the first women in South Africa to disclose her HIV status publicly. In 1993, after having given birth to her second child, she was diagnosed HIV positive. A few months later when she disclosed to her husband she was met with accusations and verbal and physical abuse. In 1995 she lost her two and a half year old baby girl, Nkosi, to AIDS. Despite these hardships Mercy continued to fight the stigma around HIV/AIDS. She co-presented the first two series of Beat It! with Paddy Nhlapo.
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Mercy Manci

Manci’s grandmother was a Traditional Healer and when she passed away Manci started dreaming. In her own words: “I used to dream of myself actually crossing, flying like a bird, crossing the bed, and the whole body – it’s a leopard – I find that I talk – saying: “My name is Nyangazesiwe” (it’s a world healer). My grandmother, she appeared and she said: “You are called, you are supposed to be trained.”” Manci then went for her training and on the third day again in her own words: “The ancestor came, and she told them what is her name, meaning that I became possessed … and it’s when she started to use this body now, to sing her song, to also dance.”
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Michelle Rogers

Dr Michele Rogers use to be affiliated to the Neuropsychiatry Programme at the University of Cape Town. An authority on mental illness and HIV, Dr Rogers now runs her own practice in Cape Town. She speaks Xhosa fluently.
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Mirryena Deeb

Deeb became known nationally during the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association’s (PMA’s) case against the South African government and the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act of 1997. As chief executive officer of the PMA, Deeb defended the patents that would continue to make life saving drugs inaccessible to the majority of South Africans. On the 19th of April 2001 the PMA did however officially and unconditionally withdraw its case against the government allowing South Africa to import cheaper drugs and regulate drug pricing.
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Mkhanyiseli Mpalali

On the 15th of February 2001 Mkhanyiseli Mpalali signed an affidavit that would accompany the TAC’s application to become an amicus curia in the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association’s court case against the South African government. This is what he had to say: “After being diagnosed in 1997, I failed matric. In 1998 I got severely sick and had to drop out of school … I don't agree with what the drug companies are doing. It seems as if they don't care about people and depend on money before people whilst people are dying on the ground.” Mpalali was a Beat It! Support group member in the 2000 series.
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Morna Cornell

Cornell worked as director of the AIDS Consortium, a network of over 600 HIV/AIDS organisations. In 2001, she co-authored the book AIDS in Context, based on 90 diverse papers from a conference held the previous year. The next few years saw Cornell managing a further number of collaborative HIV/AIDS research projects. She developed an interest in public health and decided to take up formal studies in the field. In 2004 she co-authored Waiting to Happen: HIV/AIDS in South Africa: the bigger picture with Liz Walker and Graeme Reid.
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Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota

In early 2002, Terror Lekota insulted Nelson Mandela when Mandela emplored the ANC NEC to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to embrace the science of HIV. The former Minister of Defence and ANC NEC member, Lekota split from the ANC in 2008 apparently because of the direction the party was heading in after the recall of former president, Thabo Mbeki. He became a co-founder of the Congress of the People (Cope). As a leader of Cope he said in an interview in February 2009 that he isn't an expert on HIV and AIDS and that he doesn't want to venture an opinion on whether HIV causes AIDS.
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Mziwethu Faku

Mziwethu Faku is the TAC Queenstown district co-ordinator. In 2005 Faku, Nomphumelo Khweza and other TAC comrades from Queenstown and the Chris Hani District organized a peaceful protest over why the respective districts ARV rollout was so slow, with more than 2 000 people in need of ARVs but only 200 people receiving them. The South African Police Services in Queenstown brutally broke up the peaceful protest.
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Naledi Pandor

Pandor was appointed as the Minister of Education on the 29th of April 2004. A member of Parliament since 1994, she was the Deputy Chief Whip of the African National Congress in parliament in 1995 and 1998. During her tenure as Minister of Education, a National Youth Risk Behaviour Survey found that 41% of learners in grades 8, 9, 10 and 11 were sexually active. Of this percentage 54% had had sex with multiple partners and 16% had become pregnant. Yet despite these statistics the Minister has been adamant that condoms should not be made available in schools. In 2006 over one million 18-25 year olds in South Africa were HIV positive.
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Nathan Geffen

Geffen became involved with the TAC in 2000. Having committed a few hours a week to volunteer for the organisation, he soon found himself committing ever more time. He would eventually become a staff member; first as the national manager; later as the director of the Policy, Communications and Research Department. Geffen, the longest serving staff member in TAC, was largely responsible for the numerous victories against state supported AIDS denialism & pseudo-science. In June 2008 he passed on the baton. His links and commitment to the TAC persist as he was elected as the TAC's National Treasurer in March 2008.
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Nelson Mandela

One of the world’s most revered statesmen, Mandela led the struggle to replace the apartheid regime with a non-racial democracy. His involvement in the underground armed resistance struggle led to his sentencing in 1964 to life imprisonment. He served 27 years of this sentence on Robben Island. After his release on the 11th of February 1990 he went on to become the first democratically elected State President of South Africa on the 10th of May 1994. Since his retirement, one of Mandela's primary commitments has been to the fight against AIDS. His son, Makgatho Mandela, died of AIDS on the 6th of January 2005.
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Njongonkulu Ndungane

The Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane was the Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa from 2005 to 2007. Ndungane was an anti-apartheid activist who was sentenced to three years on Robben Island in the 1960s. During his imprisonment, Ndungane became religious. He entered the priesthood after he was released. In 2006, he launched African Monitor, a pan-African not-for-profit body which seeks to monitor how the Western world meets its commitments to the Millennium Development Goals and how recipient countries fulfil their part of the agreement.
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Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

Dlamini-Zuma became a member of the (then banned) ANC in the early 70s and was elected as Deputy President of the South African Students Union in 1976, in the same year she fled into exile where she completed her medical studies. Appointed as Minster of Health in 1994, Dlamini-Zuma was hit by the Sarafina 2 scandal. During her tenure as MoH she enacted the Tobacco Products Control Bill and the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act which allowed for access to cheaper generic medicines. Towards the end of her tenure as MoH she undermined the scientific governance of medicines in South Africa.
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Nkosi Johnson

4 February 1989 - 1 June 2001 Mandela has described Nkosi as “an icon for the struggle for life.” Born on the 4th of February 1989, Nkosi was infected with HIV through mother to child transmission. He came to public attention in 1997, when a primary school refused to accept him as a pupil because of his status. The incident caused a furore and the school later reversed its decision. An HIV/AIDS School Policy was consequently developed nationally. Nkosi was the keynote speaker at the 13th International AIDS conference. He passed away at the age of 12 and was posthumously awarded the Children’s Peace Prize.
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Nokhwezi Hoboyi

Nokhwezi found out about her HIV status in 2002 after her second child, Nokuzola, sick with pneumonia, tested positive. Nokuzola, like Nokhwezi’s first baby, Bulenani, later passed away from pneumonia. After Nokuzola’s funeral Nokhwezi started ARV therapy but because of a lack of treatment literacy she defaulted on her treatment when she felt better. Eventually with a CD4 count of 3 she resumed treatment with a new regimen. In August 2004 she joined TAC where she became treatment literate and later a staff member. In 2007 she met her current partner. Nokhwezi gave birth to a healthy and HIV negative boy, Qhayiya, on the 9th of October 2007.
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Nokubonga Yawa

When Nokubonga was pregnant in 2003, she went for an HIV test and tested positive. At that time she was 15 years old. After finding out her status, she was told about the support group for PMTCT. In this support group she received support from other HIV positive mothers. When she was 8 months pregnant, she was able to take AZT and her baby was born HIV negative. Her healthy little girl is now 5 years old. Nokubonga is a TAC volunteer working as a peer educator at Nolungile Youth Clinic.
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Nomandla and Thamasanqa Yako

Nomandla and Thamasanqa (Thami) Yako live in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Nomandla discovered she had HIV in September 1999 when Thami, her infant son, was very ill. He would later access life-saving antiretroviral drugs from a Medecines Sans Frontieres ARV Pilot Programme in Khayelitsha. In 2002 Nomandla was part of a COSATU/TAC delegation, along with Zackie Achmat, Joyce Pekane and Mathew Damane, that went to Brazil with the intention of defying major pharmaceutical companies’ patents by sourcing cheap generic antiretrovirals and bringing them back to South Africa to be administered by MSF.
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Nombeko Mpongo

In 2002 Nombeko Mpongo was a co-presenter, along with Vuyani Jacobs, of Beat It! broadcast. From Gugulethu, Cape Town, Mpongo contracted HIV after being raped in1997. Although at first it was difficult to talk about the ordeal she learnt that there is life after HIV. A strong and vocal advocate for the successful roll-out of post exposure prophylaxis for rape survivors she also helps other HIV positive people to fight for their survival. Mpongo is currently employed by the City of Cape Town’s HIV/AIDS Workplace Programme.
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Nombulelo Madala

Dr Nombulelo Madala, a community HIV/AIDS doctor, was the resident doctor in the 2002, 2004 and 2005 series of Siyayinqoba Beat It! By sharing her experiences as a healthcare worker and the experiences of her anonymous patients, Dr Madala made sound treatment literacy accessible in these three series. Dr Madala is currently the Director of the Public Health, HIV and TB Programmes at the Maluti Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Lesotho.
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Nomonde Xundu

Dr Nomonde Xundu is the chief director of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Sexually Transmitted Infections in the South African Department of Health. She had resigned from her position in 2007, apparently because of friction between herself and Minister of Health Tshabalala-Msimang. She however re-negotiated an extension of her service contract and currently still holds this position. On the 4th of March 2008 she briefed MPs of the department’s updated guidelines, from mono to dual therapy, on PMTCT, the health portfolio in parliament had reprimanded the health minister for failing to provide a comprehensive report back on the revised plan.
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Nonceba & Veli Komani

Mr and Mrs Komani's 1980 case for the right to live together as a married couple was a key cause of the collapse of the hated Pass Laws.
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Nono Simelela

From 1998 to 2004 Dr Nono Simelela was the Head of the National HIV/AIDS and TB Programme in the Department of Health (DoH). Prior to her work with the DoH, Simelela was a senior lecturer and clinician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Medical University of Southern Africa. She also was the first black South African woman to qualify as a specialist Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. Today Dr Simelela is the Director of the Technical Knowledge and Support Division of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, IPPF.
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Nontsikelelo Zwedala

Zwedala lives in a shack without any basic facilities in one of Cape Town's poorest townships. Despite having seen her partner, Christopher Moraka, die of systemic thrush because he could not afford a drug called fluconazole Zwedala soldiered on. Having suffered from thrush herself for months, she bravely participated in every TAC picket, march and community awareness campaign, with a weight of 42 kilograms and a viral load of over 3 million. She now, thanks to antiretroviral drugs, weighs 65 kilograms, works as a counsellor and has an undetectable viral load. Zwedala was a Beat It! support group member in the 2002 series.
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Noxolo Vumazonke

When Vumazonke was 8 years old her molestation and rape at the hands of her father started. This would continue from 1998 to 2002. In 2002 at the age of 12 she fell pregnant. Her mother was concerned about her sudden weight gain but Vumazonke told her that there was nothing wrong. The mother persisted until she couldn’t keep the truth from her anymore. She started crying and told her mother everything. They immediately went to the police station, where they opened a case. Vumazonke’s father was then questioned and arrested for raping her. After a protracted case her father was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
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Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge

In August 2007 Madlala-Routledge was dismissed by President Mbeki as the Deputy Minister of Health. Various reasons were proffered but the wrongful dismissal was probably attributable to all of the following: the disharmony on HIV/AIDS between herself and the Minister of Health, her support of a damning report on the conditions of the maternity ward at Frere Hospital, a trip to an AIDS conference in Spain, which apparently lacked approval from Mbeki and the fact that 8 months prior, she had described "denial at the very highest levels" over AIDS. In December 2007, she was elected to the ANC's NEC in 33rd place, well ahead of Tshabalala-Msimang.
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Nozozile and Nobulelo Meltafa

Nozozile and Nobulelo Meltafa made legal history by launching a class action against the Eastern Cape welfare department on behalf of thousands of other disabled people who had had their disability grants cancelled without due course. The department offered to settle their claims for a sum of more than R46 000. By rejecting the money, Mzwandile Ngxuza, 58, Nombulelo Meltafa, 38, and Safini Mboyiya, 33, became champions for the cause of thousands of the province's disabled who had had their disability grants cancelled since March 1996. They were represtented by the Legal Resource Centre.
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Nunu Sigasa

Nonhlanhla, Nunu, Sigasa is a lesbian, a well known AIDS activist and an outspoken gender rights activist. Born in 1983 Nunu has been raped on numerous occasions in her life. She contracted HIV from one of her rapists.
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Peter Busse

1948 – 2006 Having lived with HIV for 20 years, Peter Graham Busse, was one of the first people in South Africa with the courage to disclose his HIV status publicly. A librarian by training, he became involved in HIV/AIDS work in the early stages of the epidemic. He became the director of NAPWA in 1997. Integral to the International AIDS conferences he ensured much of the success of the 13th International AIDS Conference held in Durban in 2000 and he was the Community programme advisor for the Barcelona and Bangkok conferences.
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Peter Piot

Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995, Dr Peter Piot, drawing on his skills as a scientist, manager and activist, has challenged world leaders to view AIDS in the context of social and economic development as well as security. Piot earned a medical degree from the University of Ghent, a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. After graduating from medical school, he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976. In the 1980s he launched and expanded a series of collaborative projects in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania and Zaire.
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Pholokgolo Ramothwala

Pholokgolo Ramothwala is a fortunate man. While he is HIV-positive, he decided a long time ago that his disease would work for him and not against him. At 27 years, he became Limpopo’s provincial co-ordinator for the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and was responsible for informing a widespread rural population that HIV and AIDS can be managed. He became a journalist and field researcher with the AIDS Law Project.
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Pieter-Dirk Uys

Uys has been in the theatre since the mid-1960s. He was awarded South Africa’s prestigious Truth and Reconciliation Award in 2001 and Evita Bezuidenhout, his most renowned character, proudly received the Living Legacy Award in 2000. For the last few years Uys has been visiting over 500 schools and one million school children, as well as prisons and reformatories, with a free AIDS-awareness edutainment called For Facts Sake! His candid yet humorous advice on sex and more importantly safe sex means that his message has sunk in and that countless young South Africans have not been infected thanks to For Facts Sake! and Uys’ sake.
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Primrose Mathabatha

HIV positive Mathabatha was a Siyayinqoba Beat It! support group member in the 2005 series. From the Limpopo Province she is a Tswana speaker. She is a Treatment Action Campaign member and was at one stage the organisation's Limpopo Provincial Administrator.
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Prudence Mabele

Prudence Nobantu Mabele is HIV positive and was one of the first women to disclose her HIV status publicly in South Africa. A long-term survivor and an advocate for people living with HIV, she is the founder and executive director of the Positive Women’s Network based in Tshwane, South Africa. Prudence has worked in the HIV/AIDS field since 1992. In 2004 she carried the Olympic torch as part of an international torch relay for the 2004 Olympics in Athens through the streets of Cape Town. She joined the Siyayinqoba Beat It! team in 2002.
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Queenie Qiza

1957 – May 2003 Queenie Nozibonela Qiza was diagnosed HIV positive on the 23rd of May 1997, she became an outspoken AIDS activist in her community. Aware that her disclosure could benefit others in coming to terms with their own status or preventing them from getting infected Qiza often disclosed her status. Despite her worsening CD4 count and its implications along with the inaccessibility of antiretrovirals for her, she never stopped fighting – writing 39 postcards to President Mbeki from her death bed, imploring him, not to save her, but to save the 70 000 children that were being born positive every year.
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Rachel Pelo

Rachel Pelo was diagnosed HIV positive in an antenatal clinic at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg. At the time the hospital had just been set up as a prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission pilot site. Pelo opted to take the HIV test because her unborn baby stood to benefit. Her baby boy was born HIV negative thanks to the administration of ARVs. Rachel now works as a HIV counsellor at both Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and at Cotlands Baby Sanctuary.
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Ricardo Moses

Moses was sentenced to 5 years in prison in 2002. 14 to 15 days into his sentence Moses received a message from his doctor advising him to test for HIV because his pregnant wife had recently tested positive. Moses received his positive test results away from his wife with just over 1800 days left of his sentence. In Moses’ words all he wanted to do was commit suicide. After Moses was released, his sentence having been reduced, he took it upon himself to nurse his sick wife, who had a CD4 cell count of 19 and weighed only 28 kgs, back to health. He did this while also taking care of their 5 children. His wife reclaimed her health thanks to antiretrovirals.
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Ronald Louw

27 December 1957 – 26 June 2005 Ronald Louw had been exemplary in almost all aspects of his life, except the fact that he did not get tested for HIV. Louw was a law lecturer and became an associate professor of law at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He was active as an anti-militarist; he refused to serve in the apartheid military. Central to all his activism was a commitment to equality. This is evidenced by his legal work and his involvement in human rights work, particularly in the areas of lesbian and gay equality, prisoner rights, criminal justice reform and HIV/AIDS prevention, support and treatment work.
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Saadiq Kariem

Dr Saadiq Kariem is the Chief Operational Officer and the Director of Clinical Services at Groote Schuur Hospital in Observatory, Cape Town. Kariem was also the ANC National Health Secretary.
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Sandra Merino

Sandra Merino was diagnosed HIV positive when she unexpectedly fell sick after giving birth to her son. When the HIV test results came back positive she immediately thought about the health and well-being of her baby boy. His own test results would later reveal that he was not HIV positive and that he had not been infected through mother-to-child-transmission. Merino, an Afrikaans speaker, was a member of the Beat It! support group in the 2000 series.
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Sarah Hlalele

Sarah Sebongile Hlalele was born on 8th May 1971 in Sharpeville. She died on Sunday 14th April 2002 after suffering a rare but severe side effect of the antiretrovirals she was taking in an attempt to save her life, in the face of severe AIDS. Sarah was diagnosed with HIV in 1997. Her life with HIV was marked by her contributions to the struggle for openness through her work with Bambanani. Sarah attended every court hearing on PMTCT and believed strongly that every mother had the right to protect their unborn child from HIV.
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Seabelo Kgarosi

Founder of the Sizanani Community Network in Soshanguve, Tshwane, Seabelo Kgarosi was the first openly positive person to be interviewed for Beat It! She was knowingly infected by her husband and she tragically lost her baby because of the myths and falsehoods that were told about HIV in the early days of the epidemic. The organisation that she found provides support for the positive community through counselling, income generation and capacity building.
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Shalom Ncala

Ncala was born in Katlehong, east of Johannesburg. She studied Human Resources Management through the University of Johannesburg. In 2000, while struggling to find a job, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. On the 12th of December 2000, she discovered that she was HIV positive. Three months later, when her CD4 count dropped to 9, she immediately started taking ARVs. In 2003, she started working as a health promoter at the University of Johannesburg. Presently she is working for the Aids Law Project as a receptionist/referral officer. She is fluent in five languages: isiZulu, Northern Sotho, isiXhosa, Setswana and English.
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Sibane Mngadi

Mngadi, the spokesperson for the Department of Health, has had a lot to contend with. As the spokesperson for the Department that has been bogged with scandal, incompetence, mismanagement and political battles Mngadi has had to defend the indefensible on numerous occasions. From defending Thabo Mbeki’s decision to fire Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge to his response to Stephen Lewis’ damning indictment of the government’s response to AIDS, Mngadi has tried in vain to justify the actions and exonerate the people that have brought the South African public health system to the brink of collapse.
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Sibusiso Mkhize

Mkhize, a TAC comrade died of AIDS related illnesses in November 2000 months after having appeared on an episode of Beat It! Having tested positive for HIV in October 1999 Mkhize fell sick with cryptococcal meningitis early in 2000. He shared his experiences of the awful conditions in the hospitals he was admitted to and his struggle to access the fluconazole that was necessary to treat his meningitis. He also spoke about how, even before he had fallen sick he, along with other TAC comrades, had picketed outside the offices of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to make fluconazole cheaper and more accessible to AIDS sufferers in South Africa.
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Sifiso Zulu

Sifiso Zulu is an inmate at Westville Prison in the Medium B security ward. At the moment he is serving a 15 year sentence. He started getting very ill and was referred to the prison hospital. Here he was advised to take an HIV test. Zulu tested positive. As an HIV positive inmate, he was very disappointed, because when he watched television, he’d hear organisations such as TAC saying that ARVs are effective in keeping people with HIV alive. This information inspired Zulu and other positive inmates, after their interview with Siyayinqoba Beat It!, to start advocating for treatment in their prison.
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Simon Nkoli

In 1988 Nkoli was acquitted of charges in the Delmas treason trial. A free man, he went on to found the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW). GLOW marked the arrival in the black community of gay and lesbian politics and played a key role in persuading the ANC to support the struggle for gay and lesbian equality, a process aided by Nkoli’s interaction with senior UDF officials, his former fellow detainees, Popo Molefe and Mosiou Lekota. GLOW ensured a gay & lesbian presence in the 1989 wave of political activism. In 1990 Nkoli helped organise the 1st South African Pride March. He succumbed to AIDS on November 3rd 1998.
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Sindiswa Godwana

Sindiswa Godwana, a mother of two, lives with HIV/AIDS. In 2001 she was given a new lease on life when she joined an antiretroviral drug trial. When the Treatment Action Campaign lodged an Excessive Pricing Complaint with the Competition Commission against GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim in 2002, Godwana was the third complainant. Godwana’s renewed health on antiretrovirals made a strong case to the Competition Commission for these drugs to be made accessible and for these two international pharmaceutical companies to issue voluntary licences for the manufacturing of generic versions of their drugs.
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Sipho "Paddy" Nhlapo

On the 19th of October 1999 Paddy Nhlapo disclosed his HIV positive status to thousands of viewers as co-presenter of the first series of Beat It! Active in the anti-apartheid struggle, he was diagnosed HIV positive in February 1992. He contributed to the realisation of gay and lesbian equality through his work with the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality. He currently works as a campaign manager for a media company in Johannesburg. In this position he has recently helped research, develop content and give strategic input for Khomanani's Positive Living campaign for TV, radio and print interventions.
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Sipho Mthathi

Mthathi, a leader, a comrade and a gender activist has made a lasting contribution to the Treatment Action Campaign. Having joined the organisation through TAC’s Gugulethu branch, Mthathi almost immediately made herself indispensable. Shortly after joining she became the national treatment literacy co-ordinator. From here she was elected to the position of national deputy-chairperson. At the TAC’s third national congress in 2005 she was elected to the position of General-Secretary. In this position Mthathi challenged the government and its failed responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic on numerous occasions.
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Stephen Lewis

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, appointed Stephen Lewis as his Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa in June 2001. Lewis had in the 60s and 70s served as the leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada. From 1984 through 1988 he was the Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations. Later he became the Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) from 1995-1999. In June 1998, in addition to his United Nations duties, he was appointed by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to an "International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events".
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Steve Andrews

Dr Steve Andrews has been a senior medical advisor to various AIDS interventions including the AID for AIDS program, The Open Society Foundation, The Road Freight Association Roadside Clinic Programme and Medecins Sans Frontieres’ Khayelitsha Antiretroviral Programme. He is a leading HIV clinician with extensive experience in the research, design and implementation of the clinical, industrial and policy aspects of HIV management. At the moment Dr Steve is reading towards a Master’s degree in Bioethics through the University of Cape Town. He was the resident doctor in the first series of Beat It! broadcast.
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Thabo Cele

Thabo Cele was diagnosed HIV positive in 1998. After disclosing his HIV status that same year he joined NAPWA, the National Association for People with AIDS. Later he would join the Treatment Action Campaign. In the TAC Cele was the Provincial Organiser from 2001 where he was responsible for coordinating a number of advocacy and education events. It was also here that he developed a desire to concentrate on counselling and HIV/AIDS education. Since November 2005 he has been employed by the Medical Research Council where he is a counsellor in the Health Policy Research Unit.
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Thabo Mbeki

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki's stance on HIV/AIDS has indirectly contributed to the unnecessary deaths of 330, 000 South Africans between 2000-2005. Mbeki took no regard for scientific fact, and argued over whether HIV was the cause of AIDS. His continued support of former Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang further undermined the rule of science and contributed to the confusion surrounding the treatment of HIV/AIDS. During his presidency few members of the ANC ever critisized this position and took no action against him. Post Polokwane Mbeki's stance on AIDS was, however, used as a justification for his ousting.
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Thami Mseleku

In a grading of South Africa’s various governmental department’s director-generals (DGs) by the Mail and Guardian in 2006, Mseleku the Department of Health’s DG, notably received an F; a grading which argued he should be fired. Under Mseleku’s leadership the department got its third and fourth qualified audits in 2006 and 2007. He exonerated controversial vitamin seller Matthias Rath from any wrongdoing even before a Medicines Control Council investigation into Rath's activities was completed. Mseleku has no health training, experience or knowledge.
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Thami Mthembu

Mthembu, lives in Chesterville, Durban, and speaks English, isiZulu and Sesotho. He matriculated at Zimele High School and studied BA Communications, Information and Technology at the University of Zululand. He is living with HIV, but is not currently on ARV treatment. He has had to cope with having PCP pneumonia and TB. Thami works as a freelance editor, researcher and facilitator, and has been very active in human rights work. Siyayinqoba Beat It! viewers met Mthembu for the first time in 2005 but in 2006 he would become a familiar face as a support group member.
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Themba Makwanyane

Themba Makwanyane was born in December 1957, he grew up in KwaZulu Natal and moved to Johannesburg in 1975. In 1986 Themba lost his job and was involved in an armed robbery where 4 people died. Themba Makwanyane and Movusu Mchunu were originally sentenced to death for these murders but a challenge to the consitutionality of the death sentence, based on their case, resulted in the abolition of the death penalty in 1995.
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Thembeka Majali

Thembeka Majali was the TAC’s Western Cape Provincial Co-ordinator until she was awarded the inaugural Associate in Management (AIM) 2003 Students’ Scholarship from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
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Theo Steele

Theo Steele is the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ HIV/AIDS Coordinator. Steele was also the Treatment Action Campaign’s National Council’s labour representative until a new representative was elected at the TAC’s 4th National Congress in March 2008.
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Tine van der Maas

Van der Maas was a nurse for 9 months, nearly 2 decades ago, and is no longer registered as a nurse in South Africa. According to van der Maas, she taught herself nutrition by reading books and internet articles. Based on this, she calls herself a nutritionist and most alarmingly she also claims to have one of the most incredible cures for HIV/AIDS yet seen. Her wonder cure; an AIDS diet of lemon, olive oil, garlic and beetroot and a vitamin-based immune-system booster called Africa's Solution. Van der Maas, by advocating this concoction, is partially culpable in the death of Nozipho Bengu and DJ Khabzela.
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Trevor Majoro

Dr Trevor Majora replaced Dr Nombulelo Madala as Siyayinqoba Beat It's resident doctor for nine episodes in the 2004 series. In these episodes he provided good treatment literacy advise on issues as diverse as PMTCT dual therapy and traditional African medicine.
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Vasu Reddy

Prof. Vasu Reddy was the head of Gender Studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal up until July 2006. Currently he is a chief research specialist in the Gender and Development cross-cutting unit at the Human Sciences Research Council. He holds an MA in comparative literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, and obtained a PhD in gender studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in April 2005. His areas of research interest include sexualities and identities, social and cultural aspects of HIV/AIDS and its representations, critical gender studies, comparative studies, African feminisms and service provision in a developmental context.
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Vusi Nhlapo

Nhlapo is currently the chair of the National Labour, Economic & Development Council (NALEDI) and has been since 2004. Prior to his chairing NALEDI Nhlapo was and had been the General Secretary of the National Education, Health & Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) since 1993. In the late eighties he was also the co-ordinator of Rent Boycotts & Infrastructure Fund Development of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO).
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Vuyani Jacobs

Jacobs tested positive for HIV early in the 1990s. Believing he didn’t have long to live, he quit his job and spent his days at home watching television. Channel hopping he came across a TV programme in which a beautiful African woman was speaking openly and with out fear about her HIV positive status. That show was Beat It! and it changed Vuyani’s life. He got off the couch and went in search of information around HIV/AIDS. He became a member of the Treatment Action Campaign, started taking ARVs and eventually ended up co-presenting a season of Beat It! with Nombeko Mpongo. He is currently the programme director for Siyayinqoba Beat It!
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Vuyiseka Dubula

Dubula tested positive in April 2001. A young woman from Phillippi in Cape Town, she at first found it very hard to come to terms with her status. In June 2001 that however changed when she became a member of the TAC. She has held numerous positions in the organisation. In 2002 she started off as a receptionist, she then became the Western Cape’s provincial treatment literacy co-ordinator. Recently she has been both the TAC’s PWA co-ordinator and the South African National AIDS Council’s PWA representative. In March 2008, at the TAC’s 4th National Congress, she was elected to the position of General-Secretary.
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Willie Madisha

Since 1999 and 1996, respectively, Willie Madisha was president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, COSATU, and the South African Democratic Teachers Union, SADTU. Having completed a teaching diploma Madisha became an active member of the United Democratic Front. After the unbanning of the ANC he became the first chair of the ANC in the Zebediela area. He served as the Lebowakgomo branch secretary of the SACP between 1992 and 1993. He was also a member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the SACP - after being elected at the Party's 10th National Congress in 1998.
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Wim Trengove

Wim Trengove, SC is close to legendary in South African legal circles, and beyond. He is considered, on the basis of his court successes, to be one of the country's top 10 advocates. Trengove was called to the bar in 1975. He argued successfully for the abolition of the death penalty alongside Gilbert Marcus and Geoff Budlender in 1995. Recently Trengove has successfully argued that the core minimum of access to water has to be increased to 12 kilowatts, from 6 kilowatts previously, or to 50 litres per day per individual. This case also found that prepaid water meters are unconstitutional.
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Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Controversy surrounds Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s role in South African politics. Madikizela-Mandela was the first African social service worker in the country, here seeing the inequalities in the country and poor service access she became politically active. Married to Nelson Mandela from 1958-1996, after his arrest she underwent constant police harassment. Madikizela-Mandela has been outspoken against government policies on political issues. She has also been convicted of fraud and for her involvement in political kidnappings in the late 1980s. Madikizela-Mandela was the President of the ANCWL from 1993 to 2003.
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Zac Yacoob

Justice Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob was born on 3 March 1948 and became blind at 16 months as a result of meningitis. The Natal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court admitted him as an advocate on 12 March 1973; he practised as a junior counsel from July 1973 to May 1991. During this time he represented and advised many people prosecuted for contravening security laws, emergency measures and other oppressive legislation also he represented victims of unfair evictions and people who were required to pay unfair tariffs. he joined the constitutional court of South Africa in February 1998.
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Zack Smit

Smit, an openly gay man, was a member of the Siyayinqoba support group in the 2005 series. Smit became HIV positive as a sex worker. He had resorted to sex work as a source of income at a time in his life when he was especially vulnerable after being rejected by his family. Smit also managed to turn his life around after being hooked on heroin and cocaine. By kicking his habit he ensured that he would be adherent to his antiretrovirals.
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Zackie Achmat

A co-founder of the TAC HIV positive Achmat, an atheist and a gay man, publicly refused to take ARVs until they became available through the public health sector. This sacrifice for millions of South Africans affected by HIV/AIDS drew former President Nelson Mandela to plead with Achmat to take treatment. Achmat respectfully refused Mandela and held firm in his pledge, prompting Mandela to call him a national hero. Achmat has won, amongst others, the inaugural Desmond Tutu Leadership Award and the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Achmat continues to help set the agenda for the response to the epidemic internationally.
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Zeblon Gwala

Zeblon Gwala claims that he has developed a miracle cure for HIV/AIDS called Ubhejane. This despite the fact that Ubhejane has never been tested in clinical trials, its contents have never been made public and it is unregistered and therefore sold illegally. Ubhejane is sold to desperate AIDS sufferers for R200 a month in two plastic bottles - one with a white cap that Gwala purports boosts immune cells, and one with a blue cap, that he similarly claims, fights HIV. Ubhejane, and its success as a quack remedy shows how damaging state supported pseudo-science has been in South Africa.
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Zweli Mkhize

Currently the Premier of KZN and post-Polokwane the newly elected chairperson of the ANC's health and education committee, Dr Mkhize was appointed as the MEC for Health in KwaZulu-Natal in 1994. He held this position for ten years making him the longest serving Provincial Health MEC. In 2004 he was appointed as MEC for Finance and Economic Development in the province. Dr Mkhize did his internship in 1983 at McCords Hospital in Durban before being employed at Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, the following year. Due to his active participation in the anti-apartheid struggles he went into exile with his family in 1986.
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Zwelinzima Vavi

Vavi was elected as general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in 1999. Having joined the National Union of Mineworkers Vavi was fired in 1987 as a miner following a massive strike which crippled the Chamber of Mines. He then joined COSATU as a volunteer. In 1988, he became COSATU's regional secretary for the Western Transvaal. In 1992 he took up the position of National Organising Secretary. He served as COSATU's Deputy General Secretary from 1993 to 1999. Vavi also serves on the International Labour Organisation's commission on globalisation.
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