Witness to AIDS. Edwin Cameron
was no longer multiplying within me. It was no longer progressively taking over my body, taking over my life. It was being beaten back to some deeply secluded (although still latently dangerous) viral reservoirs. But outside those recesses the rest of my body was free of it. And my immune system was, for the first time in all these years, free of its burdens.
The feeling was exhilarating. For the first time in more than a decade I was no longer – no longer felt – contaminated. From the world I had little to hide, and less to fear.
In December, just days after the meeting in Judge-President Fried-man’s chambers, my computer analyst sister Jeanie, her scientist husband Wim, and their two children joined me for a few days in Cape Town. After my original HIV diagnosis in 1986, I made a secret promise to myself – while they were young I would offer each year to take my niece Marlise and nephew Graham for a short pre-Christmas holiday in Cape Town. The beneficial delight in the beaches, long drives, silly vacation movies and chatter was, I always suspected, more wholly mine than theirs. The glorious Cape sun always blessed us with indolence. It was perfect rest. But each year we did one incontestably strenuous thing. We climbed Table Mountain.
Perhaps one of the best-known sights in the world, the sandstone massif dominates Table Bay. For hundreds of years, since Sir Francis Drake’s voyage around the world, the view of it and the view from it have arrested travellers, justly evoking lyrical descriptions. The whole mountain is now a nature reserve, jealously guarded by Capetonians and the conservationists and researchers from all over the world who treasure and study and walk amidst its priceless floral and faunal heritage.
The mountain rises 1 000 metres above sea level, its sheer rock faces hundreds of metres high. From a distance, the famous ‘table’ front looks like a monolith of rock. It is not. The frontal rock is deeply split by a gorge that angles across and into its face. Platteklip Gorge is a particular hikers’ favourite, and one of the best-known routes to the top. In the 1940s Churchill’s ally, South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts, favoured it for his regular walks.
We decided to tackle Table Mountain. On International Human Rights Day, 1997, early on a startlingly sunny morning, we started the ascent. My brother-in-law, Wim, was not as keen as the rest of us. But with an accustomed family mix of infectious enthusiasm and browbeating coercion we persuaded him to join us. Little did we know how well-justified his reluctance was. Two days later he was diagnosed with acute appendicitis and had to be rushed into hospital for emergency surgery.
But at the time no hint of illness of any nature seemed to mar the day. The path up Platteklip Gorge begins at a fresh reservoir of mountain water. As we set out past it I wondered whether I would make it to the top. Just seven weeks before I had not been able to climb forty steps from the common room to my chambers. Now, cleared of the PCP and with the virus incapacitated by four weeks of effective antiretroviral therapy, I proposed to tackle more than eight hundred steps up the face of Table Mountain.
Jeanie and Wim stopped often to check on me. Was I making it? Yes, I was. Not without effort. Not with any speed. But I was making it. Twice the path crosses the stream that feeds the reservoir below. Then it heads steeply into the gorge that splits the sandstone cliffs. I drank deeply, thirstily, from the stream each time. The proteas, ericas, disas and pelargoniums that line the path, magnificently casual in their beauty under the mild December sunshine, seemed to beckon me up and on.
As we reached the top we paused, relieved and exhilarated, before strolling to the cable station restaurant 500 metres away across the flat rock plateau. As so shortly before, the climb had made me breathless, panting and sweating. But this time it was with exuberant joy. I knew that I was well, could be well, would be well. I had been given a second chance. As I gasped in the mountain air, I also knew what a mountain of privilege had brought me there. There was much work to do.
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