Top judge on why his generation failed SA

Former Constitutional Court justice and renowned LGBTI+ activist Justice Edwin Cameron says his generation has failed young people by failing to transform society. In a News24 interview, he says those born after the democratic order ‘should feel a sense not just of disappointment but of rage’. ‘You have been failed by our generation, my generation. And by me, I point my finger at myself as well. More things could have been done, whether on the Bench or outside the Bench, but we have failed your generation.’  He points out that the time is right for a generational change because ‘we looted, we were incompetent, we were slothful, we were idle, we were evasive’. ‘We didn't apply ourselves to the constitutional injunctions to create a transformed society and the failing institutions; the formation of ultra-elites is my generation's fault,’ he reflects. Turning to the judiciary, Cameron says apart from some vrot kolle (rotten spots) on the Bench, it is hardworking and committed to the Constitution. ‘But that it's underperforming, I think, is correct. There are too many delays (and) the delays in the Constitutional Court are increasing. So, there's obviously cause for concern; there's obviously cause for betterment and improvement.’

Questioned on his ‘sense of humility’, he attributes it to four factors. ‘Growing up very poor, spending nearly five years in a children's home. It was discovering that I was gay in an extremely gay hostile world, at the onset of adolescence. Then, having wrestled for 16 years to suppress my gayness having come out, I then get infected with HIV. The terrible experience of shame and self-contamination and self-blame people with HIV still feel. So, it's poverty, queerness, stigma and whiteness: knowing that apartheid was made for poor kids like me to go from a children's home to Pretoria Boys High, to Stellenbosch to Oxford – that path was paved by apartheid.’ Cameron, who retired from the Constitutional Court in 2019, spends his days occupied as the chancellor of Stellenbosch University – his alma mater – and as the Inspecting Judge of Correctional Services, where he has been a fierce advocate for prison reform, notes the News24 report. The Presidency last month awarded him the Order of the Baobab (gold) for his contribution to the judicial system and for his ‘tireless campaigning against the stigma of HIV and AIDS, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual communities’.

Full News24 analysis