Young AIDS Activist Laid to Rest After Week of Mourning

Mourners on Saturday packed the funeral of Nkosi Johnson, a 12-year-old AIDS activist who died June 1. The downtown Johannesburg church in South Africa was filled to capacity with several hundred mourners, including former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. Banners showing a smiling Nkosi in a baseball cap asked mourners to "Let the love and courage of Xolani Nkosi Johnson fill your heart with determination to care for the infected and orphaned children of our land."

Nkosi was born with HIV. He stirred audiences with his pleas for acceptance of HIV-infected people, winning international fame last July when he addressed the opening of the UN's 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa. "We are all human beings. We are normal," he said in that speech. Tributes to Nkosi were interspersed between hymns in Zulu, Xhosa and English, with some mourners dancing in the pews, clapping their hands as others wept.

Ruth Khumalo, Nkosi's maternal grandmother, asked people to understand that Nkosi's birth mother was not a bad parent, but that her circumstances -- being a young unemployed woman, she could not afford to bring up her son -- forced her to give him away. Nkosi's birth mother died of AIDS in 1997. Gail Johnson became Nkosi's foster mother when he was 2. "Nkosi taught me unconditional love and unconditional acceptance. I ask for South Africa to do the same," Johnson said at the funeral.

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