Edwin Cameron: from orphan to the bench of the constitutional court

Abstract

Edwin Cameron has been recognised for his brilliance, commitment to human rights and social justice, and for his HIV and AIDS activism. He was born in Pretoria on 15 February 1953. When Cameron was a young boy, his father was imprisoned for car theft, leaving his mother with no means of supporting the family. This left Cameron spending much of his adolescence in an orphanage in Queenstown. At the age of nine he lost his sister Laura in an accident. He recalls his father attending Laura's funeral, and not understanding why his father had been imprisoned. Cameron describes this as his first encounter with the law at a tender age: 'Was it only an instrument of rebuke and correction and subjection? Or could it be more? I did not know it then, but this vivid encounter imprinted and impelled my future life and career.' Despite living in poverty as a child, Cameron matriculated from Pretoria Boys' High School with financial assistance. On an Anglo-American scholarship, he was able to attend and graduate, cum laude, from the University of Stellenbosch with a BA Law, and an honours degree in Latin. He became a classical studies and Latin lecturer before leaving to study on a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University, obtaining BA (Jurisprudence) and civil law degrees. Cameron graduated with an LLB degree from Unisa in 1978.