/ 7 January 2001

Tiny Aids activist slipping away

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday

ELEVEN-year-old Aids activist Nkosi Johnson, who gripped the hearts of the world when he addressed last year’s International Aids Conference in Durban, is not expected to survive the weekend.

Nkosi, who appealed to the government for access to anti-retroviral drugs and to South African citizens to accept Aids and HIV victims in his address, collapsed last weekend and was rushed to Johannesburg’s Coronation Hospital, but has since been brought home. The little boy no longer speaks or recognises people.

“As far as intervention goes, there is nothing more they can do for him,” said Nkosis foster mother, Gail Johnson. “I would love to think that Nkosi would speak to me again …that little heart is pumping, but we don’t know.”

Nkosi first came into the spotlight in November 1996 when, at the age of seven, he was labelled as “South Africa’s longest-surviving child with Aids”.

He was born HIV positive, and Johnson took him into foster care when he was 2 years old after the care centre where he was staying closed. At the time, he was given nine months to live.

Johnson’s fight to have Nkosi admitted to his local primary school in the western Johannesburg suburb of Melville three years ago, in the face of opposition from some parents, attracted further public attention.

Last April, Johnson and Nkosi opened Nkosi’s Haven in Berea, Johannesburg, which serves as a shelter for mothers and their children who have HIV or Aids.

But Nkosi will probably be remembered most for his speech at the opening ceremony of the Aids conference in Durban.

“I just wish that the government can start giving AZT to pregnant HIV mothers to help stop the virus being passed onto their babies,” he said in his tiny voice, his little body already showing the ravages of Aids.

Nkosi went on to speak at an Aids conference in Atlanta, United States, in October last year.

“He gave Aids a face, he taught acceptance across the board, he left a legacy and he introduced the concept that Aids does not discriminate,” said Johnson.