Short description
Part memoir, part thought-provoking analysis, Witness to AIDS is Judge Edwin Cameron's revealing account of living with Aids.
Long description
Part memoir, part thought-provoking analysis, Witness to AIDS is Judge Edwin Cameron's revealing account of living with Aids. He vividly explores what HIV/Aids means - for him as he faces the possibility of lingering death, for all of us in facing one of the biggest challenges of our time. Edwin Cameron's life story is one of despair turning to hope.
He escaped a tough childhood, partly spent in a children's home, to become a prominent human rights lawyer, only to be tested for HIV without his knowledge and abruptly informed of his positive HIV-status. He did not share this with anyone for many years, suffering unbearable shame, which he argues is the source of the terrible stigma that still clings to AIDS.
In Witness to AIDS, he explains his decision to go public and to accept anti-retroviral treatment, in a country beset by “denialism”. He takes a critical look at what is so different about African Aids; at the divergent reactions of Mandela and Mbeki to the crisis; the role of international pharmaceutical companies; the intricacies of “race, sex, death and Africa”; and the impact of South Africa's largest activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign.