On the Stand

A couple Fridays ago, I took the stand at Cape Town's High Court.

It was during a hearing for a case that's been all over the news here in South Africa.

When I say I took it, I should say that the chair was offered to me, and since I was sitting on the floor at the time, I figured it was as good a place as any.

I didn't have to testify. That was probably for the best, since I was there so I could report the news, not so I could make it.

The case involved a defamation lawsuit brought by a leading AIDS advocacy group against a doctor named Matthias Rath, who has rolled into town lately to try to convince people to take his vitamins instead of proven AIDS drugs to treat their HIV infections.

The courtroom was packed, and all the reporters were lined up along one wall. At first, I had grabbed a spot where reporters aren't really supposed to sit, directly behind the attorneys. So I got bumped when Rath and his retinue showed up…but not before the good doctor plopped down next to me and I tried without much success to interview him.

I moved to my spot on the floor, among several other reporters, but when the court officers kept tripping over me, one of them opened up the door to the witness stand and asked me to sit in there.

“Really?,” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

“Ummm,” I said. “Okay.”

The witness stand wasn't as prominently placed in this courtroom as it is in American courts, but it meant that I had a literal front row seat for the show that followed.

The three judges hearing the case all wore black robes, of course. They were on my right. One of the judges, the one so close to me that I could practically reach out and touch him, looked exactly like C. Everett Koop would if he had a deep tan.

A woman who I assumed to be the court reporter (though she appeared to be recording audio of the proceedings on a computer instead of a stenograph machine) sat directly in front of me. During one break, I caught her reading one of the exhibits that Rath's lawyer was trying to get admitted into evidence. It was a book by Rath called “Why Animals Don't Get Heart Attacks.” To say that this man is operating outside the scientific mainstream is perhaps an understatement.

There was a component of audience participation to the whole thing too, which made it a bit different from the courtrooms I'm used to. I don't think an American judge would take too kindly if people in the gallery kept saying “That's right!” or, emphatically, “Mmmmm Hm!” when someone made a point they agreed with.

The real show was outside, though. That's where protestors backing both Rath and the AIDS advocacy group, the Treatment Action Campaign, where having their say. They were having their say so loudly that, at one point, the judges asked representatives to go outside and ask them to quiet down so they could hear what the attorneys were saying.

The day in court was mostly about resolving procedural issues, and for the judges to rule on several motions. So when the noise outside started to increase again, in a way that sounded alarmed and unorganized, the journalists looked at each other and, one by one, began quietly standing up and leaving, even as the hearing continued.
I wanted to go too, but I couldn't get the door to the witness stand to open. After a minute of struggling right there up in front of the court as the attorneys were having their say, I got it to pop open with a mighty kick. It made a nice loud noise that would have been even more embarrassing if the crowd outside hadn't again elevated the noise level.

It turns out that there had been a brief shoving match between the two sides. Nothing newsworthy. But I stuck around for a while down on the street, because, let me tell you, people in Cape Town know how to protest. There were no dumb slogans, none of those retread chants, like: “What do we want? “Insert Your Cause Here!” When do we want it?” “Now!” Instead, there was dancing, with women forming a circle, all turning to the left, and hopping backwards in step. And there was singing. Fantastic singing, with improvised harmonies and soloists with megaphones.

I had left my camera at home because I assumed it would be confiscated by the court officers. It's a decision I'll regret for a long time, because the protest was one of the most photogenic events I've ever seen, and the court was extremely lax about letting cameras in. I saw none other than the esteemed Dr. Rath surreptitiously hold up his digital camera to snap a quick picture right before things got underway.

As the singing continued, I went up to one woman who needed no microphone for her voice to carry over everyone else. She was a very short, round older woman standing on the steps of the courthouse, slightly apart from everyone else.

“You're the best one here,” I yelled over the crowd.

She gave me a high five. Then she translated the lyrics of the songs for me. The protesters were singing in Xhosa.

“They are saying, 'TAC is my home,'” she said.

I wrote that down.

“Now they are saying, 'We are going to win and freedom will follow.'”

I wrote that down too, though neither line really illustrated the controversy, which involves TAC's ongoing fight with both Rath and South Africa's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, whose many sins, from TAC's perspective, include the fact that she has been very slow to condemn Rath.

She leaned over again, just as I made out a familiar name amid the harmonies and the Xhosa clicks. “Now they are saying, 'We will start with Rath and Manto will follow.”

Ah! Money quote.

See the story that resulted here. I had so much stuff from three weeks of reporting that not even the money quote made it in.