Aditya recently posted the very welcome news that Edwin Cameron has just been named to join the Constitutional Court in South Africa.
Cameron will be the first openly gay and openly HIV+ve judge to be named to the Court - and to a supreme court anywhere since Michael Kirby, whose retirement from the Australian High Court also recently made the news, was not out when he joined the court. As I posted at that time, we in India owe a big debt to Kirby and Cameron who did a series of very important programmes with Indian lawyers and judges some years back, , organised by Lawyer's Collective, where they came here and spoke very openly and frankly on issues of human rights, HIV, sexuality and other issues. I had earlier posted an interview I'd done at that time with Kirby. I just remembered I also did one with Cameron, so here it is. It was done around 5 years back and somethings have changed since then - like Thabo Mbeki happily no longer in the SA Presidency spreading his bizarre and destructive theories on HIV. At that time Cameron had, I think, just finished a temporary stint on the Constitutional Court, but thanks to Mbeki's views on HIV, he was not confirmed there and went back to lower Court of Appeal. Now with Mbeki gone Cameron has been confirmed on the Constitutional Court, which is excellent news even for us in India, for it ensures that there is a very well respected legal authority out there, who knows India, and who can be guaranteed to carry on Kirby's advocacy of human rights for all. Interview with Justice Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Vikram: Is this the first time you're coming to India? Cameron: No, I was here about a year ago to conduct a similar programme. That was just for judges, of the High Courts, District Courts and Sessions Courts. Michael of course is much more familiar with India. He's spent quite a long time driving through the country in the past. Vikram: What's the level of awareness you've found among the legal community in India regarding AIDS issues? Cameron: Not very high. There are of course a few people who are involved and aware of the issues. But there's a noticeably lower level of information among non-specialists in the legal community. Vikram: So what have you done on this current trip? Cameron: We have been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment! We have been slave driven by Mandeep and Anand! We've spent five days in four different cities and addressed seven public meetings. In all these meetings we've been talking about the urgency of the AIDS problem and how the legal community needs to become aware of it. And we have been emphasising the importance of a non-discriminatory response to the issue since discrimination will just drive the problem underground and make it harder to deal with. Vikram: What sort of response have you got? Cameron: Very positive. People have really responded very well at the meetings. Mandeep: The Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court even suggested that they return for a national level workshop for judges from across the country. I think that's tremendous progress. Vikram: How did you get involved with this programme? Cameron: Mandeep and Anand had heard me speak in Greece on this subject, and they approached me there and asked me if I'd be interested in speaking with Michael on this subject in India. And of course I said yes. I was really keen on doing this because I can see so many parallels between the situation in India and South Africa. As I said in my speech we have the historical links with Mahatma Gandhi and both countries have been though similar freedom struggles They are both large third world countries facing issues of poverty and equality. Both are tremendously vulnerable to the threat of AIDS. And in both countries there is a commitment to justice under law through a constitution. There are differences of course. For one, our democracy is a much younget one. And in South Africa at the moment we are facing a crime wave which is threatening the existing legal system. But there are many parallels between the two countries. Vikram: In your speech you mentioned your regret that one thing President Mandela did not do was take leadership of the AIDS issue. Why do you think that happened? Cameron: Its true. I've gone on record saying this. President Mandela did not show the sort of commitment to the AIDS that I wish he had. I do not for a moment underestimate what he did for the country. President Mandela saved our country. Partly he did this by developing a huge rapport with the young people of the country. And that is the tragedy - he could have used that rapport to do so much on the AIDS issue. I suppose he just felt it was not important enough or he didn't have the time for it. He's an old man, a proud and stubborn man, and I guess he just couldn't adapt to this issue. When he had his birthday he had Michael Jackson and the Spice Girls come down to South Africa and the fact is that he spent more time with them than he has ever spent on the AIDS issue. Its a tragedy. Mandeep: Whereas one good thing in India is that the person who is most committed to dealing with the AIDS issue is Prime Minister Vajpayee. Vikram: Could you give us a chronology of how the AIDS crisis developed in South Africa? Cameron: AIDS was first reported in 1982-83 among gay white men. Two years later it was reported among mine workers from Malawi. They were forcibly tested and 4-5% were found positive and were deported. This was a big injustice, and futile as well since it did not slow down the spread of the disease. Its a good example of how quarantining doesn't work. Despite deporting people like the Malawian mine workers the disease has spread rapidly and the rates are now. Vikram: How did you get involved in the AIDS issue? Cameron: I got involved because in 1985 I was a labour rights lawyer working with the largest mine working union. I had got involved with human rights issues while working at the University of Witwatersrand, with which I'm still associated. I got involved in labour issues, trade unions, the National Union of Mineworkers and through that with the AIDS issue and with AIDS NGOs. When the apartheid regime was overthrown I was appointed a judge in 1994-95. Vikram: Could you tell me something about growth of the gay movement in South Africa? Its not the sort of country where one would assume there was an open gay movement. Yet I've recently been reading Mary Renault's biography, and I was fascinated to read in it about this thriving gay community that existed in the Cape region with which she was associated with. Of course, it was a white gay community. Cameron: Yes, a strong gay community did exist. And it got its real boost after a private party in 1967 which raided by the police. That lead to the enactment of very anti-gay legislation. It was a totally absurd clause which prohibited the assembling of men at a party, a party being defined as any gathering at which two of more men were present! It was completely unjust and much more severe than just an anti-sodomy law since homosexuality itself was explicitly made criminal. This lead to the formation of the Gay Equality Movement. The next significant step was the emergence of Simon Nkoli, who died last year of AIDS. Simon emerged in the early Eighties and he brought up the gay issue in the black community. At the same time he challenged the mostly white and middle class Gay Equality Movement, and tried involving the gay movement with the anti-apartheid struggle. Which was wasn't easy, since the Gay Equality Movement was initially quite resistant to black issues. I hooked up with Simon at that time. I had always been outspoken about my sexuality. I was always emphatically open about being gay. Simon and I became good friends. We worked together, trying to talk to both sides of the community, and things did start to change. Vikram: That's really interesting, since its another parallel to the situation in India. On the one hand you have the upper class and now an emerging middle class gay community which is self consciously Westernised and has by and large adopted a gay identity. And then there are also emerging gay communities in lower income, vernacular language groups. They often are uncomfortable with the gay identity since they see that as Western and alien. And there are a lot of tensions between the two communities, which is a pity since both seem to be important. Cameron: Yes, both communities are important. The grass roots movements are vital since without them there will be no real change. Yet you can't dismiss the middle class communities, since its with them that the movement is usually started and develops. They are very valuable people and their contribution should not be underestimated. Vikram: How did this the apartheid movement react to the gay movement? And how did this interaction result in the amazing achievement of the rights of sexual minorities being included for the first time in the world in the new constitution? Cameron: What happened was that in 1987 an executive on the African National Congress' governing council made some very anti-gay remarks. And that created a furore in the West, where the groups who strongly supported the anti-apartheid movement were generally also strongly committed to gay rights. They lobbied the ANC and as a result Thabo Mbeki, who is now the President, publicly repudiated the anti-gay remarks that had been made. That brought the issue of sexual minorities up and the ANC's commitment to equality proved to be so strong, that the rights of sexual minorities were naturally included. I also think that blacks had suffered so much oppression, and in particular, from sexually oppressive laws like those on miscegenation that they naturally understood the importance of ensuring the rights of sexual minorities. So when it came to framing the constitution, these rights were automatically included. Vikram: Was there any reaction to your being openly gay when you became a judge? Cameron: In the first interview I did after becoming a judge we talked about my being openly gay. After that its never come up. I'm not even the only openly gay judge now. I think there are four of us now who are openly gay or lesbian. Vikram: Wasn't there any reaction from the churches? Cameron: The churches have been supportive of us. Archbishop Desmond Tutu in particular has been incredibly open and supportive. And the Dutch Reformed Church may not have been too happy about it, but they were also supportive. Vikram: So where does the gay movement now stand in South Africa? Cameron: I can't really speak for the gay activists in South Africa, because after becoming a judge I necessarily had to distance myself from them to some extent. But speaking about the gay scene in general there has of course been this amazing explosion of gay life with a lot of openness and people coming out. On a more organised level though its now getting into tricky areas like gay marriage and spousal rights. Its the same thing that's happened in the West. There are two issues. The first is the legality issue, abolishing the laws against sodomy and that is really the easy one because the argument for privacy between consenting adults is so obvious. And really, anti- sodomy laws like Article 377 in India are colonial legacies, imposed by the British on a culture which like in Africa probably never really penalised homosexuality. So getting rid of that is the easy one. Its the second issue of spousal rights which is much harder since then you are talking about issues affecting institutions like the family, and it gets more complicated and you run into more resistance. Vikram: How does the AIDS link with the gay movement in South Africa? Its a particularly urgent question over here. Unlike in the West AIDS has not automatically become a gay issue. Its seen as a threat to society as a whole. And in a way, perhaps this is a good thing, because we aren't being additionally victimised on this score. Yet at the same time we can't ignore it, because the threat is real. You could even argue that we have benefited from it because the government has given de facto acknowledgment to the gay movement under the head of AIDS awareness. Organisations like Humsafar have got funds and support under the AIDS awareness head. And not because there's been any radical shift in the government's feelings towards the gay movement, but simply because the gay movement's involvement with AIDS issues internationally has forced them to acknowledge it here - or they wouldn't get funds. So - finally - coming back to my question, how has South Africa dealt with the linkage between the issues? Cameron: Its certainly a very difficult area. I can appreciate that for reasons of tactics and strategy one doesn't want to explicitly link the gay movement with the AIDS issue. You don't want to deal with too many issues and confuse things or maybe even antagonise the situation. So I understand the feeling that the two issues shouldn't be linked and in South Africa its like India, the two issues have not been really linked. AIDS is seen as a threat to society as a whole. Yet in the process the real threat of AIDS to the gay community has been downplayed, and I think that has been very wrong. I feel guilty about it, since I played a part in drafting the initial legislation on these issues, and I feel that we could perhaps have done more to raise the importance of AIDS issues. We didn't, for much the same tactical reasons you talk about, but I increasingly feel that as a consequence the threat of AIDS to the gay community has been downplayed. And that should never happen. It is just too much of a risk. Vikram: Yet I notice that today when Justice Kirby and you spoke you didn't raise the gay issue at all... Cameron: Yes, that's true. When Michael and I spoke to the Bombay Bar Association today we both discussed whether to bring up the fact that we were gay. We have done so in all workshops. We were open about being gay, just as I was today about being HIV positive. And it didn't seem to be too much of a problem. But today it wasn't a workshop. It was a talk to a Bar Association which had asked us to speak on a particular topic, so perhaps we shouldn't throw too much at this audience. You need to suit things to the occasion. You see, I really do understand the arguments over tactics and strategy. But as a result of it, the gay community simply cannot afford to risk reducing its focus on the threat of AIDS. The simple fact is that it is too much of a threat. The simple facts of how anal sex happens and how it increases the risk of transmission through it are just too much. Yes, I'm speaking as a gay man, who is HIV positive, and I have to say this. The gay community simply has to keep communicating the threat that AIDS poses to us. You can't play with people's lives. Vikram: But isn't it also true that encouraging the growth of an out gay community will eventually encourage safe sex? Cameron: That's true. The people most at risk are definitely self- denying gay men who have unprotected sex in one night stands and other risky encounters. And encouraging open, long term gay relationships is a very important tactic in preventing this from happening. But the threat of AIDS is too much, and the realities of having it are so bad, that we can't shift our focus from the safe sex message. Two years back I was really sick because of AIDS, before I came on my current drug regime, and I can tell you that it is truly horrible. The facts of being sick with AIDS, of dying because of AIDS, are just to awful. Its because of that that I'm speaking out. And because I think in South Africa we have ignored the real threat of the AIDS issue to our society. The death of Gugu Dlamini - a young African woman who tested was HIV positive last year and who because of that who was stoned to death by her own community - convinced me about this. That's what forces me to stand in front of a group like the Bar Association today and talk about AIDS and about being HIV positive. Vikram: You just mentioned your new drug regime, and you talked about it in your speech. You spoke about the cost of it, how the international drug pricing policies pharmaceutical companies have kept these high. And of how this leads to the unjustness of you as a well paid judge being able to afford it, but there are so many millions who can't. You said you didn't want to talk about it then, but this is obviously an issue you feel strongly about. Cameron: Very strongly. The pricing policies followed by the international pharmaceutical companies for AIDS related drugs is completely unfair. They talk about their research and development costs, but the fact is that these do not apply to these drugs. These are not expensive drugs to make. They can be made cheaply available to the millions who need them. But the pharmaceutical companies are not doing so, and the international community is not forcing them to do so. I feel very strongly that these pricing policies have to be a focus for AIDS activism. Vikram: My last question. Do you think you and Justice Kirby are likely to come again? Because I think you make a great team. Justice Kirby may not have spoken on AIDS or gay issues today, I think his speech on legal issues actually helped because it interested the legal community and established the credentials of both of you. And after that what you said on HIV issues and about how you were positive, had all that more impact! Mandeep: Perhaps I should say that what happened was that when we spoke about doing this talk with the Bombay Bar Association, they said we shouldn't say we were going to talk about HIV issues, because, they said, `no one would be interested'. So instead they asked them to speak on Legal issues in the new millennium! I guess that shows their attitude, but what was good to see was that so many people came and seemed to be interested in the AIDS issues. Vikram: I noticed that Justice Srikrishna was the one who argued that given the low level of awareness about AIDS issues and safe sex in India, and given the urgency of the issue, the government perhaps needed to take a more active role. And that perhaps one couldn't afford the luxury of non-discrimination against AIDS victims. Since he's known to be one of the more liberal judges that must have been a bit disappointing. Mandeep: Yes, that was certainly disappointing. But Justice Srikrishna wasn't part of the workshops we had the last time, and I think his remarks just underline the importance of having these workshops for judges. Cameron: It certainly does and I certainly do intend to be back with Michael for more workshops. Doing these workshops over the last few days and the response we've got - its been an amazing experience. You'll definitely see us back here in a years' time.
