Mandela reports son's AIDS death, calls for end to stigma

Former South African president Nelson Mandela announced Thursday that his son, Makgatho Mandela, 54, had died that morning of complications related to AIDS. He urged other families to speak openly about the toll of a disease that has ravaged South Africa but is still widely regarded as taboo. Mandela, though 86 and increasingly frail, has mounted a highly public crusade against AIDS in the past several years. He called reporters to his suburban home to make the announcement just hours after Makgatho, an attorney and father of four, died at a nearby hospital. "My son has died of AIDS," Mandela said, ending weeks of speculation that Makgatho had the disease. He compared his son's illness to his own struggles with tuberculosis and prostate cancer, and he asked all South Africans to treat AIDS as an "ordinary" disease rather than a curse for which "people will go to hell and not to heaven." His only other son died in a car accident in 1969. [more]