Johannesburg - A packed and overflowing Constitutional Court witnessed the celebration of Justice Edwin Cameron, who was hailed as a human rights beacon as the esteemed jurist called time on his 25-year bench career.
Justice Cameron, 66, retired from active service on Tuesday exactly 25 years after first serving as an acting judge of the high court and over 10 years at the ConCourt after former president Kgalema Motlanthe appointed him to the apex court in January 2009.
It was fitting, said Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Ronald Lamola, that the last judgment which Justice Cameron delivered had to do with a decades-long land claims case, which seeks to empower vulnerable tenant farmers in KwaZulu-Natal.
Before Tuesday's special sitting honouring Justice Cameron, he read out a ConCourt judgment in favour of the tenant farmers who have been fighting claims - some of which date back over 20 years - to finally be processed by a special master.
In one of his final parting shots, Justice Cameron said the courts should intervene to ensure a functioning land-reform programme.
It was following this judgment that caused Minister Lamola to enthuse about how Justice Cameron "belonged to a prestigious group of judges" who will rule from their graves through judgments which would live on forever.
"When (former president Nelson) Mandela called you (permanently) to the bench (in 1995), he wanted you to make 'equality before the law' a reality. There is no vulnerable group in South Africa that you didn't fight for," Lamola said to loud applause.
The minister added that he would be taking Tuesday's judgement to the Cabinet meeting which sits on Wednesday, calling the ruling "a standing rebuke on us as government".
National Assembly speaker Thandi Modise paying tribute to Justice Cameron.
Justice Cameron's multiracial family, including his sister who raised the jurist after he had been placed in an orphanage aged 5, led Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to label his outgoing colleague as "the epitome of non-racialism".
"I think you have a much greater role to play towards the proper deracialisation of South Africa," Chief Justice Mogoeng contended.
Justice Cameron first gained prominence in 1999 by publicly declaring that he had been living with HIV since 1987, and had only survived death through the help of antiretroviral treatment he had begun taking in 1997.
National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise, who spoke after Lamola, honed in on this public declaration to underscore her point that Justice Cameron was one of democratic South Africa's new heroes.
"That public declaration (of your status) earned him our respect. The real beneficiaries are the thousands of faceless people" who benefit from government's free medication programme.
Modise added: "We agreed with President Mandela that you are one of our new heroes."
A visibly emotional Justice Cameron said from the ConCourt bench that he was engulfed by an "overwhelming feeling of gratitude" following the more half-a-dozen people who spoke in his honour
Recalling the message he gave to outgoing justices of the ConCourt in 2009 when he entered, Justice Cameron said he had said at the time that the first 15 years of democracy were the easiest on the bench, that his tenure was tough and that tough times lie ahead for the court.
"In my time at the ConCourt, the case load has risen by between 400% to 600%," Justice Cameron said, explaining the tougher conditions the ConCourt faces.
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