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Edwin Cameron: Witness to Aids
Was R185.00Now R129.50(eB 1295)
Delivery time: 24hr delivery in main centres: Order before 12h00 Monday - Friday, to receive the next working day
Average customer rating:  Country: South AfricaFormat: Softcover
Publisher: Tafelberg Publishers LtdISBN: 9780624041993
Publication date: January 2005
Length: 213mm
Width: 137mm
Weight: 250g
Edition: New title
Pages: 232
Illustrations: Illustrations
Readership: General
Edwin Cameron: Witness to Aids
Author: Edwin Cameron
Was R185.00
Now R129.50
Part memoir, part thought-provoking analysis, Witness to AIDS is Judge Edwin Cameron's revealing account of living with Aids. 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.
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True masterpiece!Reviewed by Graham Richter from South Africa on 17 April 2005
588 of 1152 people found the following review helpful:
This thought-proking, deeply personal, superbly written masterpiece is essential reading. The author tackles the controversial issues of HIV/AIDS head-on, relentlessly critical of the failures of leadership, while at the same time inspiringly optimistic about the future in a country so devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
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Cape Times reviewReviewed by Unknown on 30 August 2005
550 of 1130 people found the following review helpful:
Review: Jennifer Crocker
Cape Times 24 March 2005
WHEN the judicial appointments commission met to interview candidates for a
vacancy on the Bench of the Constitutional Court after the death of Justice
John Didcott, it is unlikely that any of its members could have imagined
what one of the candidates, Edwin Cameron, was going to tell them.
In a carefully crafted statement Cameron told them he was HIV-
positive. It was a remarkable act, and perhaps a seminal moment in the
fight to break the stigma surrounding people living with HIV/Aids.
Cameron writes in his book: "For a few palpable moments the commission's
judges, lawyers and politicians sat in stunned silence. I sensed that some
of them had family - or feared they had family - who were closely affected.
Perhaps their fears were closer still.
Then the silence was broken by one, more, many questions. They seemed to
embrace me, respectfully, supportively, even ardently. I emphasised that I
had been able to choose to make my statement because 'I am not dying of
Aids. I am living with Aids.' The phrase caught on.
"Before, it had felt like the hardest, most self-exposing thing I had ever
done. After, I knew that I had freed myself of a vast burden - that of
unnecessary secrecy."
Cameron's book, Witness to Aids, is a remarkable document. Although he does
not withhold personal details, this is a book about concepts, rights and
realities.
The basic storyline begins with Cameron's realisation that he has become
ill with Aids-related pneumonia. The realisation that the virus has reached
into his healthy life and made itself at home. The crushing fear of having
to begin taking anti-retrovirals, pitted against the grateful realisation
that he can in fact afford to take them. Coupled with this personal account
of the cost of treating HIV/Aids the Treatment Action Campaign's Nathan
Geffen provides insight into the battle for the provision of
anti-retroviral treatment to all South Africans.
The honesty of Cameron's story touches the reader. He is open about why he
did not disclose his status earlier, and why he finally felt he had to. He
reflect
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