THE WORLD CUP, NKOSI JOHNSON, AND AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA

The eyes of soccer lovers from around the world are on the players competing for dominance in a South African stadium. The World Cup is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world. Are the viewers aware of another battle being fought in South Africa? This battle involves life and death.

We around the world recognize the names of great South Africans like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but we don’t recognize the name of perhaps the bravest of all. Click on the link to learn of Nkosi Johnson, HIV-positive from birth, who died at the age of 12 in 2001. But not before he and his adoptive mother, Gail Johnson, founded Nkosi’s Haven, an orphanage in Johannesburg, South Africa to look after mothers and their children infected with HIV/AIDS.

Nkosi changed the policies in his country that kept HIV-positive children out of public schools. He bravely challenged people to look at and change their fears of those infected with AIDS. In his speech to the 13th International AIDS Conference, this brave child standing alone on a stage finished by saying, “Care for us and accept us – we are all human beings. We are normal. We have hands. We have feet. We can walk, we can talk, we have needs just like everyone else – don’t be afraid of us – we are all the same.”

Nelson Mandela referred to Nkosi as an “icon of the struggle for life.”