Mark Heywood

Mark Heywood is a South African human rights and social justice activist based in Johannesburg. His political activism commenced in the early 1980s in England as a member of the Militant Tendency and continued in South Africa as a leader of the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC. After South Africa achieved its liberation in 1994, Mark joined the AIDS Law Project (ALP) alongside Justice Edwin Cameron and Zackie Achmat. His activism in civil society spans the whole of the democratic period in South Africa. Between 1997 and 2010 he was the head of the ALP, one of South Africa's most successful post-apartheid human rights organizations. Later he co-founded SECTION27, a public interest law centre that seeks to influence, develop and use the law to protect, promote and advance human rights, which incorporated the ALP in 2010. He was also one of the founders of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in 1998, the AIDS and Rights Alliance of Southern Africa (ARASA), Corruption Watch and Save South Africa. He is currently the Editor of Maverick Citizen, a section of the Daily Maverick