CAPE TOWN, Dec 6 (AFP) - US talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and former South African president Nelson Mandela hosted a lavish dinner at Cape Town's botanic Kirstenbosch Gardens Friday to launch a concert to raise funds to fight AIDS which will be held at Robben Island, where Mandela was jailed under apartheid.
Mandela, 84, appeared frail, hobbling into the dining hall with the aid of a walking stick.
He headed straight towards the talk show queen and said: "I see you have lost weight, you have lost lots and lots of weight. Very good, very good."
That produced a second of stunned silence.
The concert, on February 2, will raise funds for the Nelson Mandela Foundation and several orphanages housing HIV-positive children.
Organisers say that Bono, the lead singer of the Irish band U2, will host the concert.
Artists approached to perform include Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Sting and Michael Jackson.
Winfrey, dressed in a pillarbox red corset and flared skirt and Mandela, dressed in sober black, arrived to tumultuous applause from guests paying 100 dollars a head to attend the dinner.
The talk-show host, who arrived in Cape Town last Saturday, described her trip so far as "quite remarkable", and waxed lyrical about the children to whom she had handed presents in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
"We gave the little girls dolls, which take months to make ... we had to blacken the dolls' faces. The girls were so excited they couldn't wait to tear the plastic off, they kissed the plastic wrapping."
Winfrey is due to open a school near Johannesburg, which she is funding to the tune of millions of dollars, called the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, and will coordinate projects to raise funds for children with AIDS.
"One of the reasons I am here is to humanise this pandemic," she said.
"I want people to see the real hearts and souls of South African orphans infected with HIV/AIDS."
She described Mandela as "the man I feel blessed to know as a man and love as a friend".
The Nobel Peace prize laureate addressed Winfrey as "Her Majesty - Queen Oprah".
"I have been asked several times which head of state is my hero," Mandela said.
"I answer, my heroes are those people committed to solving poverty, disease, lack of education ... that's why Oprah is my hero."
Mandela reaffirmed his commitment to fighting the AIDS pandemic.
"We got rid of apartheid," he said.
"Now the time has come to rid the world of AIDS -- it has killed more people than the major wars and disasters."
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