Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 12, 2005
Claire Keeton, Johannesburg

"I just slept with too many women," he says. "I don't know who I got HIV from."

An occasional model, he was attractive to women and he lived it up. He found out he was HIV-positive when he was a fit 27-year-old - and even his doctor refused to believe the HIV test at first.

He is one of an estimated 6% of white South Africans with HIV.

Arthur first found out he had HIV in October 1993 when he was seeing Donna (not her real name), the woman he subsequently married. Within days of discovering his HIV status, Arthur called his devout family to a meeting: his mother, father, two sisters and two stepbrothers.

"First I took my mother aside. She thought I was going to tell her Donna was pregnant. I told her: 'It's not so simple. I am HIV-positive.' There were lots of tears but I knew I had her backing."

His mother said she was devastated when Arthur told her.

"I was distraught. It was in the early days of the disease and I just knew people were dying. But 11 years later he is healthy and looks great."

She remembers: "At one stage it was touch-and-go when he was on the verge of death. If it weren't for prayer and for the Lord he would not have made it."

Arthur says he was lucky that when denial kicked in - believing that he couldn't be infected - it didn't last more than a month.

"I have spoken to lots of people and it can last a year, or last the whole of their life."

He became angry, however, and would go to nightclubs wanting to pick fights and find escape through alcohol.

The same year Arthur got married to Donna and a few years later opened his own company as a plumber.

"I was struggling with the cash flow and went into gambling, which became a sickness in itself.

"I gambled everything away - my car, my house, everything, until I was declared insolvent."

His marriage fell apart and he got divorced. He worked for a newspaper as a photographer and later moved to Cape Town.

That time was really rocky, he recalls. "My life turned back to its old ways: nightclubs, bars, alcohol, the normal boy-girl thing, and I started to do cocaine."

Despite spiralling into wild living, he always told sexual partners that he was HIV positive. He didn't have unsafe sex, though he points out that condoms fail to offer 100% protection from the virus.

A car accident one night forced him to confront where his life was heading.

He had become seriously ill and his CD4 blood count had dropped to nine. (CD4 counts indicate the strength of the body's immunity and range from 500 to 1 500 in healthy people.)

He was booked into hospital with pneumonia, dementia and hepatitis, and in 2001 he started to take antiretroviral drugs. He is disciplined about taking his pills every day and now, four years later, his CD4 count is up to 401.

Arthur has written his story in a book called Destroy and Deliver. "HIV played a big part in me finding myself at the end of my own resources," he says. "Through this experience I discovered a living relationship with my Creator that I believe will give me everlasting life beyond the grave."

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