KHOPOTSO: The opening of your book reads that, in part: ‘€œI knew that I had AIDS when I could no longer climb the stairs from the judge’€™s common room in the High Court to my chambers two floors above’€¦ After 20 steps I paused on the midway landing to lean my forehead against the wall’€¦ I could hear myself panting. I grimaced. The thought ‘€“ that thought ‘€“ could no longer be postponed. I had to see my doctor. This afternoon.’€

KHOPOTSO: If you can tells us about your experiences at that time?

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I think it was an intense mixture of desperate denial, of trying to wall out reality, and the desire to continue living. I had a fascinating job in the Johannesburg High Court as a judge under the new Constitution and I didn’€™t want to accept that I was sick. So, it was terribly difficult. I kept on postponing seeing my doctor. I kept on postponing starting treatment. Eventually, the illness overcame me.

KHOPOTSO: That sense of fear and denial, which manifests at a personal, social and even political level as has been the case in South Africa, happens to too many people diagnosed with HIV. Judge Edwin Cameron who had been diagnosed 11 years earlier before he had AIDS-defining illnesses in 1997 was no exception. In his book he tells of how he used his work as a shield from the reality of his being HIV-positive. After lengthy discussions with his doctor, on November 13 of 1997 Edwin Cameron embarked on a new journey: finding a second chance at life. He took antiretroviral therapy, which continues to sustain his health, which also sustained him through writing the book ‘€œWitness to AIDS.’€

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I wanted to attest. Witnesses have three duties. The one is to observe truthfully and meticulously. The second is to engage’€¦ And the third duty is the duty to account; to say this is what I saw, to relate it. And the book for me is an attestation. It’€™s an attempt to explain why, I as a white male, proudly gay South African who happens to be a judge has survived in an epidemic in which on the same continent many, many millions of people have died and tens of millions more risk death. I wanted to give an accounting of that, so as to give hope, so as to look forward, so as to be upward-looking and promising and optimistic.

KHOPOTSO: It sounds as though you had some sense of guilt that you could actually, because of your relatively well-off situation in life as a judge, afford antiretroviral therapy yet thousands of people in South Africa were not able to and hundreds of thousands more in the continent of Africa could not actually have access to AIDS treatment?

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: Precisely. I think survivor’€™s guilt is a well-known phenomenon. The epigraph to the book is from an Italian-Jewish man called Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, the worst concentration camp during the Second World War.   As a survivor one feels guilty. You say: Why am I living when so many other millions have died? And rightly. The question is: ‘€˜What does one do with that guilt? Do you transmute it into constructive action? Do you say I’€™m going to engage with this epidemic; I’€™m going to engage with the issues in a way that will help others to survive as I have? The question isn’€™t whether you experience survivor’€™s guilt because one does, and rightly. The question is: What you do with it?  

KHOPOTSO: For his part, Edwin Cameron has over the years chosen to speak out and act. He’€™s a patron of a number of AIDS organisations and has been instrumental in shaping up policy affecting people living with HIV and AIDS. The authorship of his book is further testimony to his unwillingness to be silent. The title of the book, ‘€œWitness to AIDS’€ as well as the title of the book’€™s chapter 5 ‘€œA judge is called as a witness to AIDS’€ is a paradox to what he does in his day job.

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: You’€™re right to call it a paradox because, professionally, I’€™m a judge. All I’€™ve ever wanted to be, professionally, is a judge. And yet, I’€™m also an African, a South African living with a disease that constitutes one of the major moral issues on our continent and in the world today. So, I was called as a human being to a moral duty that, in a sense, transcended my professional capacity as a judge. I was called to be a witness and that’€™s the paradox that the title of the book tries to encapsulate.

KHOPOTSO: Despite his privileged background, Cameron believes that illness and staring death in the face have a way of placing different people in resonantly similar experiences.  

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I’€™m a professional white man, a gay man, I work in a secure job which pays me what, for most South Africans, is a lot of money. And yet I’€™ve been through experiences which I know from personal communications and meetings and testimonies resonate with those of very poor people in our society, living in very different physical circumstances from my own people; living in townships; women, who are not men, who are not gay, like I am. And what we have in common is our inner terror, our inner sense of contamination, our fear of external stigma’€¦ I have in common with all too many Africans some of the elemental experiences of the epidemic. I have in common the experience of dying; of being terribly sick. And what I have differently from most other Africans is also, the experience of being saved by medical care and treatment. And that to me is the most urgent and compelling and drastic and desperate thing about this epidemic.

KHOPOTSO: In the book it reads as though you are at pains to understand how the government in South Africa responded, or did not respond, to the AIDS epidemic from the period pre-1994 to the democratic South Africa when Nelson Mandela was president up to now when President Mbeki is ruling the country?

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I think there is much to criticise about how both (the) pre-1994 and post-1994 government has responded to the epidemic. But another paradox about it: Many people say AIDS is an example of the failure of our new democracy. Paradoxically, I believe the opposite. We had a Constitutional Court decision which set the government on the correct path, which meant including antiretroviral therapy as one element of a much more complex AIDS programme. We had civil society activist organisations like the Treatment Action Campaign, COSATU, the (SA) Council of Churches, other civil society groupings which came out and spoke out and acted out; and that is why we eventually in August 2003 got government to commit itself to making antiretroviral therapy part of the programme. So, I see AIDS as a success story of our democracy.

KHOPOTSO: Just earlier, you spoke of a sense of contamination when one is infected or discovers that they are infected with HIV. In the book you speak quite openly about sex and HIV and how HIV is primarily a sexually transmitted infection. And in your case as a homosexual it appears as though it was even more difficult to get to grips with the fact that you as a man got HIV as a result of penetrative man-to-man sex?

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I thought in the 1980’€™s when I was infected that it was to do with the fact I was a gay man and that gay sex was still frowned upon and not talked about and still very much a subject of stigma and discrimination in apartheid South Africa. But as the epidemic spread and we realised in Africa that this was by no means a predominantly gay disease, I realised that heterosexual women, even women in relationships where they say they married as virgins and were infected by husbands were experiencing the same sense of shame that I felt as a gay man. So I don’€™t think, on reflection, that it was really to do with being gay at all. I think that the core of the stigma lies in the fact that sex is a tremendously intimate act and that transmission of an infectious agent during this intimate private moment, in a sense, means that you’€™ve been found out. It’€™s very hard to describe and I devote a chapter to trying to grapple with it. But I think it’€™s sex and not gay or heterosexual sex or any other specific form. It’€™s not how we have sex. It’€™s the fact that all of us in our different ways are sexual beings.

KHOPOTSO: I might have missed it in the book, but then it’€™s something that I observed. You have actually touched on a whole variety of even contentious issues. But one thing that I think was missing was the issue of protecting oneself from contracting HIV and AIDS. Was that a deliberate effort on your part to actually not address the whole issue of HIV prevention?

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: It doesn’€™t lie at the forefront of the book’€¦ The critical fact is that treatment is a form of prevention, treatment enhances prevention, treatment helps prevention strategies, it gets people to come forward, it de-stigmatises the disease, it changes its social nature. The fact is that there’€™s been a wrong conception that treatment and prevention are separate strategies, when in fact, they’€™re closely interlinked. And perhaps, that’€™s what comes through in the book that I haven’€™t put into the

fore-ground the question of prevention because I’€™m like tens of millions of other Africans. I was living with HIV infection. From March 1985 when I got infected prevention wasn’€™t going to help me anymore. We must see to the rest of the continent to ensure that they’€™re not infected. But we also need to look at the people who have already been infected. And perhaps, that was the focus of the book.

KHOPOTSO: Are you angry, are you bitter, are you pointing fingers, are you alerting us to the fact that effort and much, much greater effort needs to be given to addressing the issue of HIV and AIDS in South Africa?

JUDEG EDWIN CAMERON: I think there are many issues in South Africa that should make us as South Africans angry: Issues of poverty and justice, gender discrimination and AIDS. And I think it’€™s right that one should be angry that more has not been done, that there are people falling ill, that we haven’€™t, each of us in government and each of us personally, done more. The question isn’€™t whether we should feel angry because we should about all of those issues. Tthe question is: What are we doing about it ‘€“ are we going to transmute our anger into constructive action? And that’€™s what I hope the book is about; not to point fingers, not to recriminate, not to be negative, not to cast reflections, but to find where we might have been mistaken, but, more importantly where we can move constructively ahead’€¦

KHOPOTSO: In the past you’€™ve had people reacting to statements that you have made on HIV and AIDS as a judge, as a human rights lawyer. What sort of response are you expecting now ‘€“ are you expecting somebody to say: ‘€œNow here is another white man.’€? I mean, this is a country that is still caught up in racism, sexism, sexual-orientationalism, if you want ‘€“ primarily I can assume that you’€™re writing as somebody who is living with HIV and AIDS, (But) again, accusations might fly that ‘€œhe is writing as a white man in South Africa?

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: But that’€™s unavoidable. Each of us as South Africans writes or talks or experiences our lives or responds to our challenges from some condition of specificity, whether it’€™s race or class or culture or language or sexual orientation or gender, of course. But the question isn’€™t what divides us. The question is: What do we have in common? What do we have in common in facing the threat from this epidemic? What do we have in common in the opportunities that it offers each of us to unite in action? And that’€™s what I hope the book really reaches out to.            

E-mail Khopotso Bodibe