Mandela breaks Aids taboo

Nelson Mandela has revealed that his son Makgatho has died of Aids, breaking a widely held African taboo that holds it shameful to openly admit deaths from the disease.

Mandela, one of the most prominent Aids campaigners in Africa, said he believed the only way to fight the disease was to speak about it openly.

Secrecy had surrounded Makgatho's illness until his death early on Thursday morning, after which Mandela decided to go public. The stance of Mandela, 86, was immediately praised by many South Africans, who said it would help in the fight against the deadly disease.

"His [Mandela's] courage shows his commitment to the fight against HIV/Aids in this country and his willingness to save many more lives currently affected by this pandemic," said the opposition Independent Democrats' leader Patricia De Lille, who has taken a voluntary Aids test to encourage other South Africans to do so.

By announcing the cause of his son's death, Mandela has followed the example of the Inkatha Freedom Party leader and former Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who went public last year about his own son's death from Aids.

Makgatho, a 54-year-old lawyer, was admitted to the intensive care unit of Johannesburg's Linksfield Park Clinic last month and remained there.

"We have called you here today to announce that my son has died of Aids," said a grief-stricken and frail-looking Mandela, flanked by his third wife Graca Machel and several relatives in the garden of his Johannesburg home.

"Let us give publicity to HIV/Aids and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness, like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of HIV."

The taboo that keeps many Africans from openly speaking about the disease has hampered efforts to address the pandemic on a continent in which more than 25 million are infected.

Mandela emphasised he had not been aware of the nature of Makgatho's illness when he began lobbying for more openness on Aids several years ago.

Mandela has refused to be drawn into a controversy with his successor, President Thabo Mbeki, who denied knowing anyone suffering from Aids in a 2003 interview with the Washington Post. Mbeki's spokesman, Parks Makahlana, who worked for Mandela when he was president, died of Aids.

According to the United Nations body UNAids, five million of South Africa's 45 million people are infected with the virus and every day at least 600 South Africans die of the disease.

Mbeki caused a storm in 2001 when he said the real cause of Aids was poverty not HIV. Mandela refused to answer questions about his views on Mbeki's position.

Mbeki's Government has drawn criticism over its Aids policy, and only court intervention made it begin rolling out anti-retroviral drugs, through public hospitals, after questioning their effectiveness.

Mandela's stance is likely to add impetus to calls for the Government to take the disease more seriously.

Despite his father's popularity and his family's fame, Makgatho Mandela, who worked for one of the country's top law firms before resigning to work as a legal consultant for a commercial bank, kept a low profile. Many did not know Mandela had a son still surviving.

Makgatho was one of four children from Mandela's first marriage to Evelyn Mase.

- INDEPENDENT