Breaking the Tabboo
July 1, 2005, Nelson Mandela, Africa’s most revered statesman of this generation announced that his only surviving son Makgatho Mandela, 54, died in a Johannesburg clinic where he had been receiving treatment for more than a month. "I 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/AIDS. And people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary," said a frail-looking Mandela, surrounded by his grandchildren and other family members. Mandela's courageous announcement of his personal AIDS tragedy challenged the widespread taboo which keeps many Africans from discussing a pandemic which now infects more than 25 million people across the continent. Was this enough to b...