SIMON TSEKO NKOLI 1957 - 1998 - Lesbian and gay equality activist - HIV/AIDs activist - Anti-Apartheid activist (front)
H.I.V. POSITIVE ISSUED BY THE TREATMENT ACTION CAMPAIGN AND THE SIMON NKOLI MEMORIAL COMMITTEE (back)


The late South African activist Simon Nkoli was a member of the Gay and Lesbian Ofganisation of Witwatersand (GLOW) as well as the first executive committee of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE), and a key figure in the organisation's successful campaign to include sexual orientation in post-apartheid South Africa's constitutional equality clause. As a result, South Africa became the first country in the world to constitutionally cement the rights of LGBT people in 1999.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was founded in 1998 to campaign for access to AIDS treatment. One of its most significant victories was the 2002 Constitutional Court ruling in which the South African government was ordered to provide anti-retroviral drugs to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies during birth. In the years following the judgment, the TAC's campaigns were instrumental in securing a universal government-provided AIDS treatment programme, which has since become the world's largest. In 2006, the New York Times called the TAC "the world's most effective AIDS group." In 2007, in large part owing to pressure from the TAC, the National Strategic Plan on HIV, STIs and Tuberculosis 2007-2011 was adopted by Parliament.