AIDS Activist Honored

For eight years, Mercy Makhalemele, 30, has fought against all odds to become one of South Africa's leading AIDS activists -- a role that brings her to New York for this week's UN special session on AIDS. Monday found her mingling with heads of state at the world body; on Tuesday night she was scheduled to receive the Meade Bailey Award for her work, which includes lecturing on the perils of unsafe sex and lobbying for support for people with AIDS.

Makhalemele's trip to New York, accompanied by her son Thabang, 12, was sponsored by Manhattan's Bailey House, which houses homeless people with AIDS. "Her courage and determination inspires us and puts us in awe," said Bailey House Executive Director Gina Quattrochi.

Makhalemele's unlikely career as an activist began when she tested positive for HIV after becoming pregnant with her second child. She kept the news from her husband until their new daughter was six months old. When she finally broke the news to her husband -- who she is certain infected her with the virus -- he roughed her up and threw her out of the house. Berating her publicly at the shoe store she managed, he got her fired. Her husband died in 1995, followed one year later by their daughter.

But Makhalemele did not surrender to grief. For the past year-and-a-half she has been running the Tsabotsogo Community Development and Training Center, a Johannesburg nonprofit that provides services to young people with AIDS. "There is a lot of fear in South Africa, and we need more education for health care workers, from doctors to nurses. There is a stigma even in the society here. AIDS is seen as a gay disease, so people begin to discriminate against people living with HIV/AIDS."

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