No place for judge who holds HIV-positive in contempt.

Byline: Zackie Achmat

Hlophe and the law No place for judge who holds HIV-positive in contempt I AGREE with the opinion held by many that Cape Judge President John Hlophe is an unprincipled and unethical person not fit to hold judicial office. However, I want to write about Hlophe's phobias his fear, contempt and discrimination against people living with HIV as well as gay men and, by extension, lesbians. This alone should disqualify him from a position in our Constitutional Court. Hlophe allowed Christopher Moses to get away with murder because of HIV. The victim of a particularly brutal murder, Gerhard Pretorius was a gay man. Moses claimed he had a relationship with Pretorius and that, on the night of the murder, he and the deceased had unprotected penetrative sex for the first time. He also claimed that after the sex, Pretorius told him that he had HIV. Moses's defence, as stated by his psychiatrist, was that he flew into an annihilatory rage beyond his control. The state psychiatrist demonstrated that Moses could not have lost total control because the evidence demonstrated a sustained complex and goal-oriented attack. Hlophe should have found Moses guilty. …