Mandela announces son died of AIDS

South Africa's Nelson Mandela, one of Africa's most committed campaigners in the battle against AIDS, announced that his only surviving son had succumbed to the disease yesterday.

Makgatho Mandela, 54, died in a Johannesburg clinic where he had been receiving treatment for more than a month. His wife Zondi died in 2003 from pneumonia.

"We have called you today to announce that my son has died of AIDS," the 86-year-old Nobel Peace laureate told a news conference, urging a redoubled fight against the disease.

"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 to say somebody has died because of HIV. And people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary," said a frail-looking Mandela, surrounded by his grandchildren and other family members.

Mr Mandela was helped to his seat by his wife, Graca Machel. He frequently paused for water at the news conference in the garden of his Johannesburg home.

His announcement of his personal AIDS tragedy challenged the taboo which keeps many Africans from discussing an epidemic that now infects more than 25 million people across the continent.

In South Africa, which with some five million HIV/AIDS infections has the highest AIDS caseload in the world, the disease kills more than 600 people each day, activists say.

"There is no disease which we must be afraid of identifying that a member of the family has died from," Mr Mandela said, citing his own announcement in the 1980s that he had been diagnosed separately with tuberculosis, and later, prostate cancer while in prison. He underwent successful prostate surgery.

"That is the only way of making ordinary illness ordinary," Mr Mandela said.

The opposition Inkatha Freedom Party praised Mr Mandela's "courageous step" of disclosing the cause of his son's death.

"We know it is not an easy decision to make and yet it is the right thing to do," it said in a statement.

Veteran Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi helped to break the silence last year when he announced that two of his children had died from AIDS-related causes.

The Treatment Action Campaign which has led pressure on the government for the rights of HIV/AIDS sufferers to life-prolonging drugs also hailed Mr Mandela's announcement.

"It is a very, very important step," spokesman Mark Heywood said. "Mandela is to be saluted for it."

AIDS and HIV in S. Africa: key facts

Here are some key facts about AIDS and HIV in South Africa, which has more people infected than any other nation:

¤ One in nine South Africans - more than five million of a total population of 45 million - are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

¤ Most of those infected are between the ages of 24 and 34.

¤ AIDS activist groups say at least 600 South Africans die each day from HIV/AIDS.

¤ Cases of full-blown AIDS are expected to rise from 271,500 in 2000 to 458,860 in 2010, putting strain on the country's already stretched public health system.

¤ HIV/AIDS is expected to cut South African life expectancy from an estimated 59.9 years in 1990 to 45.2 years this year.

¤ Thirteen per cent of South African children were estimated to be orphans in 2002, many of them because of HIV/AIDS.

¤ The government of Mr Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, bowed to growing pressure for universal treatment in late 2003, announcing a programme to give AIDS patients life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs free of charge. But the rollout has been beset by delays, provoking criticism from lobby groups like the Treatment Action Campaign.

¤ Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose Inkatha Freedom Party fought bloody turf wars against Mandela's African National Congress in the lead-up to multi-party elections in 1994, announced during last year that both a son and a daughter had died of AIDS.

¤ Some economists have estimated South Africa's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be 17 per cent lower in 2010 than it would have been if HIV/AIDS were not a factor.

¤ More than 60 per cent of mines surveyed in mid-2004 by the South African Business Coalition on HIV and AIDS reported lower profits as a result of the pandemic.

¤ Neighbouring Swaziland and Botswana have the world's highest per capita HIV infection rates, both nearly 40 per cent, according to UNAIDS figures.

¤ Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has 25.4 million people infected with HIV - 60 per cent of the world's total in an area with just 10 per cent of the world's population, according to World Health Organisation estimates.