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JEREMY MAGGS: Prominent activist and human rights champion, Zachie Achmat, is considering a run for Parliament. Achmat, known for his tireless work in the fight against HIV/AIDS and his commitment to social justice has long been a respected figure in South Africa. As the founder of the Treatment Action Campaign, (TAC) he played a pivotal role in advocating for access to lifesaving antiretroviral drugs. He’s on the line now to Moneyweb@Midday, so what is his thinking right now.
ZACHIE ACHMAT: I have made the decision; the decision is to stand as an independent for Parliament. Something that in 47 years of public life I had never thought of doing but it’s essential for people like myself to enter Parliament. I have only one thing that I stand on and that is fix the state.
So I have no grand vision for the country because I think a grand vision can only come after we have looked at aspects of the state that need to be fixed.
Of course, I can’t fix it but it’s critical for me to participate in movements outside, in community-based organisations outside and bring the voices of people in about … how to fix electricity, how to fix Sassa (South African Social Security Agency), which is about income security. I want to focus on those three things and possibly health, particularly mental health, and affordability of medicine.
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Why do I think it needs to be done is [because] our country is on the brink of a number of problems that could arise. As we saw in July 2021, when the convicted criminal, Jacob Zuma, who was our former president, his gang organised an attempted coup in KwaZulu-Natal.
What we have to ask ourselves is if we don’t get these things right, the desperation of working class and poor people, the unemployed, and even the dissatisfaction of the middle-class communities can lead to a disintegration of parts of our country, and here I think particularly of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West.
We are lucky in the Western Cape, where we have more than a sense of stability, we have a government, the Democratic Alliance, which as you know, I do not support, but there are elements of their work that undisputedly is better than any other part of the country.
Personally, I think it’s the duty of people like myself, who are on the progressive left, to work towards a very broad coalition but to be independent.
JEREMY MAGGS: So you are confirming that you are entering politics as an independent. You’ve been on a listening tour of South Africa, but my question then is what real difference can an independent play in the political firmament, given that party politics are so entrenched in this country?
ZACHIE ACHMAT: The first place I’d start is to say that people are tired of the political parties and their antics. Anywhere you go in communities, people believe they are not represented. Political parties are represented and there’s a barrier between them and their representatives, which are party bureaucracies, inter-party fighting and fighting between parties, and that’s particularly so at local government level, where parties represent people.
I think what can an individual, independent MP do, my example is based on Helen Suzman. Here’s someone, irrespective of what you think of her politics, was an English-speaking white Jewish woman in an all-male Christian nationalist Afrikaans party. If it wasn’t for Helen Suzman, quite a lot of the information about detainees, what was happening to them, political prisoners, people under the pass laws and any number of questions would not have been in the public domain, and certainly they represented a very small break on the juggernaut that was apartheid. So an independent can do stuff like that. But I know that I can do some of what she did, and I hope I can but there’s also a different record that I bring to it.
Julius Malema said I’m going to be lonely in Parliament and be out voted and the work is boring, committee work is boring.
The approach I take is twofold, firstly, let me correct Mr Malema and say, yes, Parliament committee work is boring, it can be tedious but it’s incredibly hard. But if you get it right, if you take the knowledge and share it with communities, and share it with fellow MPs, it’s incredibly rewarding and it assists in fixing the state and rebuilding the country, instead of the grand posturing that political parties do that divides all of us.
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JEREMY MAGGS: The two principal issues, Zachie Achmat, facing South Africa right now, one is load shedding, the other is the cost of living crisis. Where would you start, what would you start doing, how would you start activating and agitating?
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ZACHIE ACHMAT: Well, the first thing is I want to join SCOPA (Standing Committee on Public Accounts), there’s a financial triad, the Appropriations committee, which gives people money to steal at the moment, SCOPA, which checks that people have actually stolen, chides them but then continues with business as usual, and then there’s the Treasury, which sets the architecture, the finance committee. SCOPA is probably the most important body in Parliament.
If you go there and go to the Appropriations committee, for me, the energy crisis is an absolute no-brainer that we have to drive renewables, it’s an absolute no-brainer that the grid needs to be taken out of Eskom and made an independent space, a state-owned entity with a board that knows what it does.
The provision of solar power and other renewables to the grid must be opened up so that there’s competition.
My colleagues on the left would say, yes, but you’re supporting privatisation, and I would say something simple, does the state have a coal company or is that privatised? I would also say that nothing prevents the trade unions that have billions of rands of investment, of actually spending the money, not on stock exchange gambling but on development within the country. Energy would be one … with a major focus on what can be done with solar.
JEREMY MAGGS: Zachie Achmat, we are going to leave it there, unfortunately time is against us but thank you very much indeed. Confirming that he is going to run as an independent MP in the upcoming election.
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