jonathan berger

Interview by Vusi Msiza

When did you start to get involved in the lesbian and gay struggle?
I first got involved in lesbian and gay equality work soon after I moved down to live in Cape Town in July 1994. A boyfriend at the time took me along to an Abigale meeting at Jack Lewis' place in Long Street. Before I knew it, I was helping to organise Cape Town's pride march that year. Within a year, I was doing volunteer work with the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE) and helped in the letter writing campaign in support of the equality clause in the Constitution.

I moved back to Johannesburg at the end of 1995 to start studying for a law degree. In mid-1997, Zackie Achmat and I set up the NCGLE's Gay and Lesbian Legal Advice Centre (GLLAC). I started to run GLLAC on an interim basis and was appointed to the position sometime later. I remained in that job until June 1999, some six months after I graduated from law school.

What work did you do at the NCGLE?
As co-ordinator of GLLAC, I administered the centre and provided free legal education, paralegal advice and referral services on a range of sexual orientation-related discrimination matters. I co-ordinated and conducted casework, drafted legal submissions and developed resource and training materials for legal advice workers. I also participated in other NCGLE campaigns and actions.

What work did you do at the Constitutional Court?
I worked as a "law clerk" to Justice Kate O'Regan, meaning that I mainly conducted legal research (including international and comparative constitutional law) and drafted legal memoranda on the various legal and constitutional issues that arose in each case before us. The work also entailed judgment editing, which means checking all sources for correctness and ensuring that judgments are free of all errors, including typos!

Why did you move to the AIDS Law Project (ALP) instead of continuing to work within the LGBT movement? Are you still doing LGBT work in your spare time?
Before moving to the ALP, I spent a year completing a master's degree in law at the University of Toronto in Canada. My thesis ("Tripping Over Patents: AIDS, Access to Treatment and the Manufacturing of Scarcity") dealt with international trade law, domestic constitutionalism and access to essential treatments for HIV/AIDS. It seemed as if there was only one place for me to go when I returned, that being the ALP.

I also needed new challenges and wanted to be a part of exciting cases that the job at the ALP entailed. I also realised that HIV/AIDS is the single biggest threat to South Africa right now and wanted to play a meaningful role in addressing the epidemic. The job at the ALP would allow me to do both-contribute to the struggle for access to treatment and develop myself as a public interest lawyer.

What is the difference between the work that you have done and the work that you are doing now?
The work I am now involved in gives me much more scope for creative lawyering. The GLACC job was ideal for someone new in the field of law and provided me with a great opportunity to learn quickly. But my strength does not lie in providing legal advice services, but rather in using my skills to develop and implement creative legal strategies that aim to deal with specific social, political or legal problems. My job at the ALP has given me an ideal opportunity to be a part of cutting-edge legal cases, which is very unusual for someone so early in a legal career.