XOLANI
NKOSI R.I.P.Nkosi Johnson, the 12-year-old South African boy who became an icon in the fight against the AIDS epidemic, died Friday.
"I'm sad but it's almost a relief that my little boy is not suffering any more. He has run a race that very few adults have run,'' said Nkosi's white foster mother, Gail Johnson.
Nkosi's body was taken from his bed at the family home in a Johannesburg suburb and placed in a wooden coffin before being driven away by funeral directors. Family friends said the boy weighed less than 22 pounds when he died. Black and white well-wishers paid their respects.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela praised Nkosi for his bold struggle against the pandemic, saying he was an example for the whole world to follow. "He was very bold about it and he touched many hearts,'' Mandela said
PHOTO GALLERY OF XOLANI NKOSI ...HERE |
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FOSTER MOTHER DENIES ABUSE  Gail Johnson & Dr. Ashraf Coovadia Nkosi's foster mother on Thursday said she would seek legal advice following a media report alleging that she was abusing the boy for financial gain. ...MORE |
CLASH WITH MBEKI
Nkosi shot to world attention when he made an emotional appeal at the opening of the world's biggest AIDS conference in the South African city of Durban last year.
Mbeki had earlier drawn fire by questioning the causal link between HIV and AIDS and by appointing so-called AIDS dissidents to his advisory panel on the issue.
Johnson
said Nkosi had wanted to meet Mbeki in his final days to try to change
the president's views.
Christine Maggiore of Alive & Well Aids Alternatives says the media
has popularized the notion that Nkosi's illness is proof that HIV causes
AIDS and that Mbeki is wrong for considering poverty, unsanitary living
conditions and drug treatments as causes of immune suppression in his
country. This notion is based on the fact that Nkosi was adopted into
a middle class home as an infant and his mother's claims that he began
drug therapy a few months ago and only after becoming ill.
On her website Maggiore
claims that during an interview filmed by her partner Robin, Nkosi
told her: "that contrary to official statements, he has been on
toxic AIDS drugs for eight years and has become ill while taking them."
Christine says she "tactfully shared this revelation with his adopted
mother Gail Johnson and the rest of South Africa during a live radio
program that featured both of us as guests."
DRUG CULTURE
For years Nkosi Johnson has been fed up to twenty-five pills a day.
The medical code says "First do no harm." Yet, doctors medicated him with toxic chemotherapy because his mother had died of an illness regarded as Aids defining and he was presumed to be inevitably Aids-prone due to his 'HIV positive' status.
But many unmedicated 'HIV positives' never develop any illness. Had the orphaned Nkosi lived in a black community he might never have been medicated, or may have been treated with the traditional herbal medicine that in many Western eyes is the work of untutored savages.
In any event, Nkosi was adopted by White culture. That was the beginning of the end for Nkosi.
Our white culture has a different religion. White-coated doctors are our priesthood. Bodily immortality is the promise. Drugs are our sacred food from the holy of holies, even if side-effects and misdiagnosis are now killing millions in standard clinical practice -let alone in experimental areas like Aids.
One of the many drugs administered to Nkosi was AZT. The bottle it comes in carries a skull and crossbones. The Physician's Desk Reference has warned doctors that AZT can cause illness indistinguishable from Aids.
Remember that the mechanism of Aids is unknown and only circumstantially linked to the HI virus. No one can prove HI virus has caused Nkosi's symptoms. No such doubt surrounds AZT and other chemotherapy-style drugs he has received. These are 'kill or cure' drugs that have taken the lives of many young cancer sufferers. And many so-called 'Aids victims.'
In truth, White Medicine has been killing Nkosi with misguided therapy, based on bad diagnosis. Yet it is a profitable error. It sells lots of expensive drugs. Pretending all is well keeps doctors in social standing. In short, white medicine has sacrificed Nkosi. That's entertainment. An Emergency Room drama.
SHOWBUSINESS
Meanwhile, Western media describe Nkosi as having died from the Aids
virus and castigate South African president Thabo Mbeki for daring to
question the value of the magic White drugs.
As usual, sentimentalism comes easy and defeats any prospect of healthy journalistic scepticism. It is no coincidence that oversentimental showbusiness personalities dominate Aids charities -that's showbiz! This deplorable media reality is killing the defencless Nkosi. He relied on the media to inform him, to inform his foster mother as she deserved -and as the broader society deserves also.
But it is a profitable dereliction of duty for the press. Sentiment sells newspapers and it does not hinder pharmaceutical advertising. In short, the white media is sacrificing Nkosi. That's entertainment too.
History
is written by Victors.
They will write that they could not save Nkosi.
Truth
is authored by Time.
It will write that they killed him with
sentimental fascism.
The Dictator cries when the pretty girls hand him flowers. The fascist is always sentimental. Ask Nkosi the Aids puppet. A pretty boy with an bunch of Aids flowers wheeled out for the great dictators at the 2000 Durban Aids conference. Satisfying the needs of our sentimental cult of gallant victimhood. Ask the feminists about that one.
Across
the continent, other African men and women like Nkosi are dying too.
The situation of his foster mother Gail Johnson is a microcosm of the
white relationship with Africa: well-intentioned but misinformed.
Our White Medicine is
the Black Death to Africans.
Fintan Dunne, Editor
www.aidsmag.com
news@aidsmag.com
Intl -353-87-948-9817
 A
Prayer for Nkosi As
stars, mists and candleflames,
mirages, We
look at life, impermanent and fragile, May
you Xolnai Nkosi, experience luminous mind The
world is filled with sorrow. May
the merit of our prayers ease the
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APARTHEID LEADER'S
MONUMENT COLLAPSES
Pretoria - A landmark monument to apartheid self-destructed
in Pretoria on Thursday - exactly 40 years after South Africa became
a republic under the old National Party regime and exactly 24 hours
before Xolani Nkosi died.
Parts
of the dome of the monument to former NP Prime Minister JG Strijdom
disintegrated shortly before dawn, causing heavy chunks of concrete
to destroy the roof of a parking garage underneath. The massive sculptured
head of Strijdom toppled from its pedestal, coming to rest in two parts
at the centre of a hole formed when the garage roof caved in. Blaming
structural failure, Pretoria director of city planning Louis Bouwer
told reporters later in the day: "Somewhere, something was worn out"....MORE
MAN FIRED IN MORNING
WINS LOTTO IN AFTERNOON
Hobart - A man fired on Friday from his job at a ferry building company
was told just hours later he had scooped the 9 million Australian dollars
jackpot in a nationwide lottery. Early Friday he learned that he and
99 workmates were to be laid off by Incat, a company that makes wave-piercing
catamaran ferries. He was job hunting when he heard on the radio that
authorities were looking for a Powerball winner in Hobart -his home
town. He drove to a lottery outlet and had his ticket checked. "I just
couldn't believe it, it's an unbelievable shock," he said....MORE