Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
South African Press Association - May 18, 2005
Lawyer Anthony Brink made the claim in papers he filed in reply to the TAC's application in the Cape High Court for an urgent defamation interdict against Rath and his Dr Rath Health Foundation.
Brink told the court the TAC was abusing its democratic freedoms "in a manner not unlike the Nazis in the Weimar Democracy in the early thirties (attracting the poor to its marches with the promise of a beer and a place to sleep)".
Board chairperson Michael Bagraim said the board took the strongest exception to Brink's statement, and that the Nazi analogy was a "gross distortion of the historical record".
He said that the kind of extreme violence and racism that characterised the Nazi movement had few parallels anywhere in human history, and to describe the TAC in such terms served only to minimise the sheer evil that the Nazis represented.
Bagraim said he acknowledged that the controversy over HIV/Aids and how to treat it was an extremely emotive issue, but this did not justify making "wantonly provocative, untrue and offensive" statements.
Rath and his foundation have been waging a war of words against the TAC, which they claim is a front for the pharmaceutical industry and is pushing the use of "poisonous" antiretroviral drugs for people with HIV/Aids.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Democratic Alliance said in Parliament that Rath was turning Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her department into the laughing stock of the world.
"The DA welcomes the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority to ban the latest advertisements by Californian snake-oil salesman, Matthias Rath," DA MP and health spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard told the National Assembly.
"We can only hope that the investigation into the Rath Foundation by the Medicines Control Council is concluded swiftly and results in some sanity returning to the debate on the treatment of HIV/Aids.
"This man's misinformation for purposes of personal enrichment is daily costing the lives of South Africans fooled into believing that his vitamins can cure Aids. They never have, and never will," she said.
Tshabalala-Msimang owed it to HIV-positive South Africans to publicly and vocally distance herself from "this parasite".
"In light of the Hon Minister's obvious fondness for the Rath Foundation, his advertisements in international newspapers this past week have contributed to making both our health system and the minister a laughing stock around the world. The minister ought to know better," Kohler-Barnard said.
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