KHOPOTSO: Supreme Court of Appeal Judge, Mr Justice Edwin Cameron has an illustrious legal career, both as a human rights lawyer during apartheid and later, as a judge in a democratic South Africa. Notwithstanding the relatively affluent status that his profession and race affords him, here is a man who knows what it feels like to live a life filled with shame, secrecy and fear ‘€“ some of the feelings that many people living with HIV experience.          

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: World AIDS Day 2006 takes me back exactly 20 years to December 1986 when I was diagnosed as living with HIV. And I could trace my infection to a very specific, singular event at round about Easter 1985. So, I’€™ve been living with the infection for 21 years. But my initial response was, indeed, to retreat in utter horror and shock and to feel appalled. I felt contaminated. I felt under a death sentence. I felt that I could not reach out to those closest around me ‘€“ my family, my friends, my colleagues. And I told virtually no one for the first three years.            

KHOPOTSO: After a long, arduous process of inner grappling and anguish, Cameron began a process of disclosing his HIV status to those closest to him. In a dramatic move in 1999, he stunned the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) and the rest of South Africa, when he announced that he was HIV-positive during an interview for high judicial office with the Constitutional Court.

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I had fallen terribly ill with AIDS 12 years after my infection, but I’€™d recovered. And it was the most extraordinary experience of my whole life to have faced death from this terrible affliction, to have known what it’€™s like to have death inside your body’€¦ but then, to be given your life back because of access to antiretroviral therapy. Soon after my own treatment was succeeding, my friend Simon Nkoli, died’€¦ And just a few weeks after Simon’€™s death in December 1998, Gugu Dlamini, was stoned to death in her Durban township. And all of these events made me realise that’€¦ I was a judge holding office under the Constitution, dealing with HIV/AIDS matters as a lawyer, but living this terrible secret that HIV had also affected me so personally. So, I decided to speak.

KHOPOTSO: He did not only speak out. He spoke out with a mission.

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: I decided to speak out positively and to say that treatment had saved my life and that, therefore, we have to commit ourselves to making it available to other people who face death without it.

KHOPOTSO: Some cynically viewed Cameron’€™s action before the Judicial Services Commission as a tactical move to sway the interviewing panel’€™s decision in his favour.

But the detractors withdrew their criticism almost immediately. Before the deeply personal revelation, which could have also impacted negatively on his career, Cameron was already publicly involved with AIDS work at a policy level. He joined Wits University’€™s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), in 1986.

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: During the very period that I was dealing with this

deep-frozen silence and terror of my own infection, I became involved with the unions’€™ response to AIDS with COSATU and the National Union of Mineworkers’€¦ We drafted the first comprehensive industry policy on AIDS, negotiated with the Chamber of Mines. The irony was that while I was living with this infection as a white gay male, I was dealing with its effects on the bulk of South Africa’€™s population through my public interest work. But I hadn’€™t yet reconciled the personal dimension and the policy and   public dimension. That was to follow later.

KHOPOTSO: At the end of 1991 he started the AIDS Consortium and then, the AIDS Law Project (ALP) in 1993. At the ALP he used the law as a tool to champion the rights of those living with HIV. The 1993 McGeary case, where a doctor breached the right to confidentiality of a patient comes to mind.

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: The McGeary case concerned a young man who went to his doctor for an insurance check-up. And his doctor called him in on the Monday and told him that he had HIV. And on the Wednesday afternoon he went and played golf with another doctor and with a dentist’€¦ He told the other two without the permission of his patient. And by the Friday, the whole community knew that Barry McGeary had HIV. And he was very brave to decide to take legal action against the doctor. We fought a horrific trial before a very AIDS-negative judge in the Witwatersrand High Court and lost the case. We lost our client – our client died from the stresses of the trial after giving his evidence. But we went on. We took the case to Bloemfontein to the Appeal Court there. And in a very fine unanimous judgement by Judge Louis Harms, with his four colleagues concurring ‘€“ they set the matter right. They said that the doctor had been wrong, that he had to pay damages to Barry McGeary, and they set out in a very fine judgement, which is now internationally recognised, the principles of doctor-patient confidentiality in relation to AIDS.      

KHOPOTSO: His public disclosure in 1999 did not earn Cameron an appointment to the Constitutional Court. He remains a Supreme Court of Appeal Judge ‘€“ a position he’€™s held since 1994. Although his judicial position prohibits him from public shows of protest, he remains involved in South Africa’€™s response to AIDS ‘€“ a costly exercise of juggling the personal and the professional life.                                      

JUDGE EDWIN CAMERON: Of course, one can never make a complete separation of the personal from the professional because what lies most deeply within you finds expression in your professional and public commitments, the principles you apply. So, you cannot draw that divide. But it’€™s a terrific cost.

And I often think we’€™ve got five million people in South Africa ‘€“ 10% of our entire population (who are HIV-infected) – we’€™ve got many people in leadership positions who, I think, must feel very much the same sort of conflict and we haven’€™t yet experienced the joy and the release and the added energy and the affirmation of speaking out about in public.