Mandela reports son's AIDS death, calls for end to stigma
Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 02:44AM
TheSpook
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]
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