The Library and Information Service received the Justice Edwin Cameron Collection in 2021. The collection is housed as part of the Special Collections of the Library and is now ready to be used by researchers.
Justice Cameron took office as Chancellor of Stellenbosch University in 2020. Edwin Cameron SCOB, born 15 February 1953 in Pretoria, is a retired judge who served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He is well known for his HIV/AIDS and gay-rights activism. President Ramaphosa appointed him as Inspecting Judge of Correctional Services from 1 January 2020.
Cameron's early career combined academia and legal practice. Cameron practised at the Johannesburg Bar from 1983 to 1994. From 1986 he was a human rights lawyer at Wits's Centre for Applied Legal Studies, where in 1989 he was awarded a personal professorship in law. His practice included labour and employment law; defence of African National Congress fighters charged with treason; conscientious and religious objection; land tenure and forced removals; and gay and lesbian equality.
Justice Cameron is an alumnus of Stellenbosch University. In his installation speech he spoke about the “joy of being associated with the University that is so clearly on the way up – up in intellectual output, up in teaching skills, up in research and scholarly publications, up in international renown, up even (though this counts the least) in international ranking. Joy particularly in being able to preside over quite a number of graduation ceremonies over the last two and a half years. It has been an honour to confer degrees and witness elated students graduating, some the first in their families to attend a tertiary institution" (Cameron, 2022).
The Cameron collection takes pride of place next to other collections of SU Chancellors such as Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. The collection has been sorted and indexed and an inventory for the collection is available here. The collection contains publications and lectures by Cameron as well as material on his voluntary community service. Importantly, it also contains material on his career and his years as Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. We invite students, researchers and members of the public to peruse this unique collection, which will be formally launched on 6 December this year.
For enquiries on the collection, please contact Ms Marieta Buys, Head: Special Collections (hmbuys@sun.ac.za).
Bibliography:
Cameron, E. 2022. Stellenbosch University deserves to be free from hate and degradation. News24. [Online]. Available from https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/columnists/guestcolumn/edwin-cameron-our-dignity-demands-we-have-capable-institutions-and-a-capable-government-20220518.
