Judge Edwin Cameron

Standing in front of a group of more than 50 audience members, Cameron admitted that he is sometimes bewildered by views in his country about AIDS. He spoke of what he calls "AIDS denialism," or a systematic refusal to accept that AIDS exists, that it can be sexually transmitted, and is virally specific and infectious. This denialism has led to a struggle for truth at the core of the national response to AIDS in South Africa, he said.

According to a 2001 report from South Africa’s Medical Research Council, 40 percent of deaths among young adults in the country were from AIDS, said Cameron, and up to 20 percent of young people in some areas were infected with HIV. The government had initially indicated that the report was flawed. Other organizations have reported high HIV/AIDS incidence and mortality rates in South Africa, such as the United States Agency for International Development, which cites a 20 percent HIV infection rate among South African adults.

The government’s response to AIDS has been questioned within the country and within international circles. President Thabo Mbeki has disputed the link between HIV and AIDS, and his government has been associated with similar suggestions.

There are signs that attitudes may be changing. In December, the ruling African National Congress, headed by Mbeki, indicated at a national meeting that it was willing to make HIV/AIDS a priority in its development agenda.

What is needed, said Cameron, is a national program that would address nutrition and prevention, while including anti-retroviral therapies. These therapies have helped make AIDS a chronic, long-term, manageable disease elsewhere, he said.

Cameron speaks from personal experience. Diagnosed with HIV in 1986 at a time when AIDS was tantamount to a death sentence, Cameron sank into profound depression, he said. He eventually fell terribly ill, but his health improved dramatically after he received anti-retroviral therapies. Now, he would like to see his countrymen have similar options. He made his HIV status known publicly in 1999 and says he uses his life story to help discuss AIDS in public forums.

Cameron linked the roots of AIDS denialism to several possibilities, including a sense of shame attached to the disease because it can be transmitted as an STD. Denialism and shame have interfered with investigations into why the AIDS crisis has hit South Africa and Southern Africa particularly hard, said Cameron. Sex, he says, has been reinvested with feelings of guilt and blame, "terrible overlays" that have "paralyzed our national response" to the AIDS crisis, he said.