AIDS boy activist dead

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AIDS boy activist deadOnline edition of India's National Newspaper

on indiaserver.com Saturday, June 02, 2001

AIDS boy activist dead

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, JUNE 1. Xolani Nkosi, the 12-year-old boy more widely known in

the media as Nkosi since his adoption by a white family and his

coming under media spotlight during the International AIDS Conference in

Durban July last year, died this morning at the house of his foster mother,

Ms. Gail , in Johannesburg. His death, with grim ironic symbolism,

occurred on International Children's Day.

Xolani Nkosi who even at the age of seven had become South Africa's longest

surviving HIV positive born child, was infected at birth by his HIV positive

mother who died of full- blown AIDS in April 1997. He became critically ill

in December last year with seizures, suffering apparently irreversible brain

damage and went into a coma. For weeks thereafter the media kept a ghoulish

vigil outside the house, only to call it off when it became clear that the

child was not going to oblige.

His death comes in the wake of a report in yesterday's Sowetan, the

Johannesburg based daily with an overwhelmingly African readership, that Ms.

Hilda Khoza, a reflexologist, had lodged a complaint with the South African

Human Rights Commission alleging that Nkosi's foster mother was ``abusing''

and ``exploiting'' the child for financial gain. ``Nkosi has become a bank

to Gail,'' the report quoted Ms. Khoza as saying.

Ms. has strongly denied the allegations. ``This is very damaging to

our image and reputation and will affect aid from local and foreign

donors,'' Ms. said. Her house, named Nkosi's Haven and a home for

HIV positive children, is a recipient of international donations..

The life and death of Xolani Nkosi is not in the least unique. Tens of

thousands of children in South Africa are born HIV positive which develops

into full blown AIDS, lose one or both parents, and die at a very young age.

What however was unique about Nkosi was the shape and direction that his

life took after his adoption by his foster mother, Ms. Gail , who

gave him his new name, Nkosi , the circumstances that preceded his

death, and indeed the very manner of and the drama that accompanied his

death in the home and under the care of his foster mother.

Thus, the tragic tale of Nkosi came to be surrounded by a sideshow which

also became a media show, with highly disturbing moral, political and the

all too obvious racial implications. Thus, too, the death of Nkosi, unlike

that of tens of thousands of other similarly placed black children, became a

very public affair. Indeed, at the height of the controversy over the so-

called causal links between HIV and AIDS, his tragic but by no means unique

predicament and even his physical persona of this child was sought to be

used by various lobbies to score points against the President, Mr. Thabo

Mbeki.

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