Word: nkosi
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...most powerful message can come from the un-likeliest messenger. When Nkosi Johnson, an 11-year-old South African with AIDS, walked onto the stage at an international aids conference in Durban last year, he hardly seemed able to hold the microphone, let alone address 10,000 delegates. The shiny black suit he wore hung from a body ravaged by disease. The belt around his waist had six extra holes punched in it. He wore a diaper in case of diarrhea. Lit by a fearsome spotlight, the tiny figure paused for a few seconds, took a deep breath and began...
...Nkosi Johnson died in June this year, aged 12. In sub-Saharan Africa, where 28 million people have HIV/AIDS, his brand of candor remains rare. But thanks in part to the dying boy's speech, more people have begun to speak about AIDS rather than hide from it. This year the cacophony of South Africans questioning their government's AIDS policies - and President Thabo Mbeki's odd reluctance to accept the link between HIV and AIDS - grew louder. Across the continent groups began demanding cheaper or free antiretroviral drugs. "Nkosi made a lot of adults think, ?Well, if this little...
Like most kids infected with AIDS, Nkosi was born with it. He met his father for the first time at his mother's funeral. Taken in as an infant by Gail Johnson, a middle-class white woman who met him while volunteering at a Johannesburg AIDS care center, Nkosi lived a relatively normal childhood. He loved puzzles and cards. "He cheated like hell," remembers Gail. When the former P.R. executive first enrolled Nkosi in primary school, they met opposition from some parents because of his HIV status. Mother and child went public with a complaint and won. Nkosi dreamed...
...Nkosi Johnson As South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki responded to his nation's AIDS epidemic with denial and rationalizations, it took a 12-year-old boy infected through his mother to claim humanity for millions of his sick countrymen. Johnson was abandoned by his mother and first met his father at her funeral, but before his own death on June 1, he showed more courage than any elected official, laying down a challenge - "care for us and accept us" - that, if ignored, will imperil Africa's future...
...DIED. NKOSI JOHNSON, 12, sweetly tenacious South African AIDS activist born HIV-positive, befriended by world leaders after addressing the 13th International AIDS Conference last July and pleading for compassion and treatment for afflicted children, babies and pregnant women; in Johannesburg. Shortly before he died, he wrote, "I wish I was well...Then I would be able to grow...