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 - June 21, 2005
He was speaking to supporters on the steps of the Cape High Court after a full bench reserved judgment in TAC's urgent application for an anti-defamation interdict against Rath.
The organisation is seeking to stop Rath and his Dr Rath Foundation from claiming the TAC is acting as a front for the pharmaceutical industry in promoting antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for people with Aids, and that it is forcing the government to "spread death and disease".
Achmat told his supporters that the TAC legal team had called Rath and the leaders of the Traditional Healers' Organisation (THO), which asked to join Rath as a respondent, liars.
"That is the truth. They are liars," he said.
"We are here to say to them, we are going to finish you off in terms of making sure that you don't experiment on people.
"We are going to make sure that our government arrests Dr Rath. And if they don't, we will take them to court."
The TAC says Rath's staff are conducting unauthorised pseudo-medical experiments on township dwellers. Rath, who has the tacit backing of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, claims his vitamins can "control" and "reverse" Aids, an assertion dismissed by mainstream medical experts.
The Medicines Control Council is investigating his activities.
Earlier, in court, the TAC's advocate Geoff Budlender dismissed arguments by lawyers for Rath and the THO that TAC did not have a reputation worth protecting.
This was a "most astonishing proposition", he said. The organisation had received national and international awards for work that was admirable and important for the public good.
He rejected the argument that the TAC, which several years ago labelled Tshabalala-Msimang a murderer in its campaign for a rollout of ARVs, needed "clean hands" if it sought the protection of the court.
"If the submission ... is correct, the consequence is quite startling. It is that as a result of the abuse of the minister any person, whoever he or she is, and whatever his or her motive is, can now with impunity make any defamatory allegation of any kind about the applicant, and do so repeatedly.
"It is hardly surprising that [THO advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza] has not been able to find any authority at all for such a remarkable proposition. None exists."
Budlender said Rath and the THO had produced no evidence, as opposed to theories or supposition, that the TAC was funded by pharmaceutical companies or their agents.
On the contrary, eight witnesses had proved in affidavits that since its inception in 1998 the TAC had insisted on political and financial independence from the industry.
Ntsebeza had told the court that the TAC on its website called for people to go on campaigns of civil disobedience, and said they should be prepared to be arrested and have criminal records.
"There's no reputation to protect. They can't come here and say we have this good name and reputation," he said.
To make its point, the TAC could not resist defaming others, including President Thabo Mbeki, whom it had called paranoid.
"I don't know if he is, but if he is, I wouldn't say so in public. This would be defamatory," Ntsebeza said.
Reserving judgment, Judge Siraj Desai said it would take "several weeks" for him and his two colleagues to formulate their findings.
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