Former chief justice Edwin Cameron shares life lessons – Boksburg Advertiser
Former Chief Justice Edwin Cameron shared some of the things that shaped his life at U3A’s first meeting of the year at Northfield Methodist Church on January 10.
Cameron’s legal career began in the 1980s, practising at the Johannesburg Bar from 1983 to 1994 until president Nelson Mandela appointed him as an acting judge of the high court.
In 1995, he was appointed permanently to the Gauteng division of the high court.
From 1999, he served at the Supreme Court of Appeal and on December 31, 2008, then President Kgalema Motlanthe appointed him to the Constitutional Court where he served until his retirement in 2019.
The retired judge explained that his life was shaped by poverty, racial privilege, shame and stigma.
Cameron’s parents couldn’t look after him and from the age of six, he and his siblings spent their childhood at an orphanage in Queenstown.
“This gave me an acute sense of disparity, need and what we can do for each other. No children’s home is perfect but I’m grateful for what we had.”
He said his path out of poverty was paved by his racial privilege, which allowed him to receive the best education.
Cameron won a scholarship to study at Pretoria Boys High. After matric, he went to Stellenbosch University where he studied Latin and classics.
He then went to the University of Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship where he switched to law.
At the age of 14, in high school, Cameron discovered he was gay but couldn’t reveal it because of shame.
“I kept it a secret for 15 years because of the shame attached to homosexuality in the 1960s and still today.”
He got married and had a son. But at the end of his marriage, he vowed to never apologise for something intrinsic to his humanity.
“As intrinsic is your sexual orientation to your humanity, so is my queerness. I can’t do anything about it,” he said.
After coming out in 1982, he said he was infected with HIV within three years.
“When I was diagnosed in December 1986, I knew that my life was over. I knew I would die in a few years. I‘d never become a judge, which was my ambition. I knew I would die before I was 40 and would never see justice in our country. But none of that happened.”
In 1997 while working as a judge in the high court, Cameron became extremely ill. But his wealth allowed him to afford the anti-retroviral treatment, which saved his life.
Afterwards, he became an HIV/Aids activist, urging the government to provide ARVs to everyone.
He said the stigma of HIV is still enormous because it is related to the fact that 99% of infections are sexually transmitted.
“This compelled President Thabo Mbeki to wrongly, unscientifically and irrationally deny the science and reasons concerning HIV/Aids.”
Cameron paid homage to activist Zackie Achmat who formed the Treatment Action Campaign in 1998, forcing the government to make ARVs available to South Africans.
“Zackie chose to do something. Today seven million South Africans are living with HIV and most of us are on ARVs. It’s so important to get everyone on treatment.”
The U3A is an international group catering to retired people seeking company and entertainment. They meet every second Tuesday of each month at Northfield Methodist Church.
