TAC wins against Rath
2006-03-03 11:50
Cape Town - Vitamin salesman Matthias Rath has been ordered by the Cape High Court to stop publishing statements accusing the Treatment Action Campaign of acting as a front for pharmaceutical companies.
"The limited restraint on free speech, resulting from the order I make, is not directed to stop the respondents from participating in a debate of immense public importance," Judge Siraj Desai wrote in a judgment of a full Bench of the court.
"The restraint is directed at the manner in which the respondents have chosen to participate in the debate and the methods they chose to employ," Desai continued.
With Judges Louw and Moosa concurring, he wrote that the order was imposed to ensure that the TAC's continued participation in the debate was not hamstrung by defamatory and unfounded allegations of undue intimacy with the pharmaceutical industry.
The TAC application related to the "boisterous" and, at times, "unseemly" debate on the efficacy of antiretroviral treatment for those suffering from HIV/Aids.
"In the light of the scale of the pandemic and its frighteningly severe consequences, this discord is unsettling," Desai found.
TAC executive member, Zackie Achmat, and other supporters of the HIV/Aids group packed the courtroom.
Neither Rath nor any of his foundation's officials were in court for the judgment.
Attorney Likhaya Makana, the legal representative of the third respondent, the Traditional Healers' Organisation, was present.
Earlier on Friday, as he waiting for the court to convene, TAC executive member Zackie Achmat expressed frustration at the time it had taken for the judges to deliver their ruling.
"It's very sad this matter has taken nearly a year to decide, and I'm worried about how the courts are administered," he said.
"If this was a woman waiting for an order against her (abusive) husband, she would be half-dead by now."
The TAC says Rath's staff have been conducting unauthorised pseudo-medical experiments on township dwellers.
Rath, on the other hand, 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.
- SAPA