Associated Press - Saturday December 5 3:53 PM ET
Andrew Selsky, Associated Press Writer

Most of the 3 million South Africans with AIDS or its precursor, HIV, would not receive such a warm reception after disclosing that they are infected. The tiny minority who do reveal it are often fired from their jobs, hounded from their homes, treated as outcasts. Untold numbers take the secret to their graves. But at the community center in the black township of Soweto, many in the crowd had HIV or AIDS. The gathering, sponsored by the National Association of People Living With HIV/AIDS, is meant to help remove the stigma from the disease and give the unfolding tragedy a human face.

A similar meeting held recently in KwaZulu-Natal province, where an estimated 25 percent of adults are infected, drew 1,000 people.

South Africa is only now beginning to confront the disease that has made its way from central Africa around the world and is now exploding in southern Africa. Every day, 1,500 South Africans become infected. By the end of the year, 168,000 more South Africans will have died from AIDS. Often, relatives say the person died of some other disease.

This week, President Nelson Mandela denounced "the silence that hangs over our cemeteries when we bury loved ones knowing they died of AIDS, but not speaking of it."

AIDS sufferers are stigmatized because the disease - which in Africa is most commonly transmitted by heterosexual sex - is associated with promiscuity and death, and because many people wrongly believe they can contract AIDS by being near an HIV-positive person, said Liz Floyd, who runs the Johannesburg area health department's AIDS program.

Sekgametsi More, a social worker at Johannesburg Hospital, said most people with HIV whom she has counseled have been shunned.

Only a few days ago, More said, she told a young woman that her HIV test was positive.

The previous day, the woman had been fired from her job as a live-in maid because her employer suspected the woman - who had been constantly sick because her immune system was depressed - had AIDS. The woman had been monogamous and was apparently infected by her former boyfriend.

"When we told her she was HIV-positive, it was terrible for her," More said. "Now she knew she had this disease, plus she had no job and no place to live." At Saturday's gathering, people spoke of dealing with those multiple blows. Joyce Malope, 27, discovered that she was HIV-positive in 1994, soon after she was raped.

"My husband dumped me after he kept telling me I was going to die," she said. "I tried to commit suicide because I had no one to turn to."

She was then directed to a counselor, who taught her to "try to live with AIDS rather than thinking my life was already over."

After dozens of people had spoken of their illness, the crowd began dancing to reggae music. Looking on, Floyd said she hoped many more such encounters could be held, and that more people would come to them.

"It's absolutely critical for this society to come to grips with the epidemic," she said. "If people keep it under wraps - if you don't meet the people who have it, it's very difficult to believe it is real."
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