Proposals made to the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) in its final report on the new Sexual Offences Act:

The mere transmission of HIV should be made a crime of rape.

• the intentional non-disclosure of one's HIV-positive status,
• negligence of one's HIV status

• Johnny de Lange, African National Congress MP and chair of the committee on justice and constitutional development. At present the committee is discussing amendments to the Sexual Offences Act.
• University of Cape Town Dean of Law Professor Jonathan Burchell, criminal law expert Professor PJ Schwikkard, Acting Justice of Appeal Belinda van Heerden and Justice Eberhard Bertelsmann.

The intentional transmission of HIV should be made a crime of rape.

• where a person was tricked into agreeing to sex,
• a person who is HIV-positive and engages in unprotected sex is guilty of rape, but if condoms are used carefully, it can no longer be considered to be a crime.

No new legislation should be introduced to regulate the disclosure of the HIV-status of people having consensual sex.

• HIV-specific statutory offences will have no or little practical utility as any occurrences can be sorted out by common law (attempted murder).
• Introducing a new crime will add to problems of an already overburdened criminal justice system.
• There are few or no prosecutions under existing criminal measures.
• It would be almost impossible to prove that an accused was aware of his or her HIV status - as this should be totally confidential.
• The social costs involved in making negligent transmission of HIV is not justifiable. It would not be right to punish people for their failure to know their HIV status.
• It would make the stigmatisation of people with HIV worse.
  Most women know their HIV status. Most women are also infected by men who do not know their status. "These women then suffer abandonment, rejection and violence on disclosing their HIV status to the male partners who infected them in the first place.
• It would infringe on the right to privacy to an extent that is not justified.
• It would have no impact on diminishing or preventing the spread of HIV.

• Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Edwin Cameron.
• Helen Alexander from the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Trust

• The National Prosecuting Authority's special sexual offences unit, because common law was not wide enough to ensure the effective prosecution of this. The statutory crime should include all potentially lethal sexually transmitted diseases.