JOHANNESBURG, June 9 (AFP) - At a funeral service Saturday for the child who woke South Africa up to the impact of AIDS, Nkosi's bright eyes stared down from banners above the challenge that is his legacy: "Care for infected and orphaned children."
"Fill your heart with determination to care for the infected and orphaned children of the land," his foster mother Gail Johnson read from the banners, when she stood up to pay tribute to her son.
The longest surviving child with AIDS in South Africa, Xolani Nkosi Johnson died aged 12 on June 1 at his Johannesburg home, after living with Johnson for 10 years.
His biological mother died of AIDS in 1997.
"Nkosi taught me unconditional love and acceptance. I ask South Africans to do the same," Johnson told about 2,000 mourners, AIDS activists, entertainers and politicians crowded into the Johannesburg Central Methodist Church.
Zambian former president Kenneth Kaunda was among them.
Johnson said: "In the future children will be brought up empty, if we don't care for them."
Nkosi's grandmother, Ruth Khumalo, thanked "white lady Gail Johnson" in her speech. "(Nkosi and Gail) journeyed together. There have been obstacles ... and today is the end of the journey," she said in Zulu.
The presiding bishop of the Methodist church, Mvume Dandala, appealed to the congregation and to the country to take forward Nkosi's legacy of fighting for acceptance and care for people living with HIV/AIDS.
"If you cannot take a child in, give (support) to those who will do it," he asked South Africans who earn a wage," said Dandala.
He echoed Nkosi's powerful words at an international AIDS conference in the east coast city of Durban last July, calling for infected people to be treated as "normal people".
"I want people to understand about AIDS - to be careful and respect AIDS - you can't get AIDS if you touch, hug, kiss, hold hands with someone who is infected.
"Care for us and accept us -- we are all human beings," he said.
Bongani Khumalo, from the president's office, said Nkosi had been an eloquent campaigner in his emaciated body and his legacy would live on.
"We must not talk as if Nkosi is not alive for Nkosi lives.
"He stood tall like a warrior as he fought for those infected or affected with AIDS," said Khumalo.
"Thank you for your limitless love, for being an exemplary person ... not only to Nkosi but to other children under your care," he said to Johnson.
Saturday's service, filled with songs and praise for Nkosi as a hero, ended after nearly three hours with pall bearers carrying Nkosi's white and gold-plated coffin out of the church.
Outside demonstrators for the Treatment Action Campaign, waved posters demanding an "HIV/AIDS Treatment Plan Now" -- a call which Nkosi himself supported.
The poster had two photographs -- Nkosi, a victim and symbol of the AIDS pandemic alongside Hector Pieterson, the first high-profile victim and symbol of the anti-apartheid struggle.
Young people from a township east of Johannesburg ran beside the hearse, all the way from the church to the cemetery, about seven kilometres (four miles) away.
Under the midday sun gathered at a cemetery to bury Nkosi in a small grave adorned with a red carpet.
As his coffin was gradually lowered into the ground at about 2:30 pm (1230 GMT), as tears ran down Johnson's face.
Johnson, dressed in black and red, comforted her daughter Nicci and other members of Nkosi's biological family wailing with grief at the graveside.
Children from Nkosi's school and Nkosi's Haven -- a shelter for HIV-positive mothers and children -- also wept as Nkosi was buried.
As soil fell onto the coffin and mourners paid their last respects to Nkosi, Johnson held and comforted babies and children from Nkosi's Haven which she started.
Johnson is also committed to building the Nkosi Johnson AIDS Foundation, to care for infected mothers, their children and AIDS orphans.
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