Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 8, 2008
Malungelo Booi, Lubabalo Ngcukana and Sashni Pather
A MOTHER of seven killed herself and her four youngest children after a rumour that she was HIV-positive led to her being ostracised and ridiculed.
Nokuzola Mfiki was 37 and a resident of Mtambalala village, about 30km from Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape.
She took her children's lives on Wednesday morning by feeding them poisoned milk. She then drank the same poison.
Her body and those of her two daughters, Phelisa, 8, Phezisa, 5, and her sons Alikho, 2, and seven-month-old Endinakho Mfiki, were found by a village elder in a field less than a kilometre from their home.
All the children had been fathered by the same man.
Mfiki leaves behind three other children - aged 18, 16 and 14.
The incident has sent shock- waves throughout the country.
Mark Heywood, deputy chairman of the National Aids Council, told The Times the deaths illustrated just how far South Africa has to go in the battle against discrimination and the stigma attached to HIV-Aids.
He said people living with the disease still "fear the response of friends, family and community if they have HIV and that's the tragedy".
"This is a treatable illness and is not considered different from TB and diabetes.
"This tragedy shows that, within communities, the level of stigma is so high that, instead of seeking help, they would rather kill themselves.
"We have a long way to go in providing education to people about HIV-Aids and in many ways it is this failure that led to her death.
"We are approaching the International Aids Conference in Mexico and they need to be made aware that this has happened to eradicate the complacency towards this epidemic."
Speaking for the family, Zanele Quwese said Mfiki had been ridiculed and vilified by some villagers after a woman, who had had an affair with the father of her children, died from an Aids-related illness.
Quwese said: "They [villagers] also believed that she had the disease ... this has been going on for quite a while.
"She once came home crying uncontrollably because some villagers had been shouting that she had Aids at a taxi rank in Port St Johns.
"At first she tried to be strong, telling herself that she would ignore these incidents.
"But as the hate campaign intensified, it began to take a greater toll on Mfiki.
"She even stopped catching a taxi from her village to town, because she could not bear the humiliation heaped on her."
Hours before killing herself, Mfiki wrote 10 letters - eight of them were sealed in envelopes and two were left open.
In the letters she detailed why she had decided to end her life and those of her four youngest children, fathered by the man who is said to have been having an affair with the woman who died of an Aids-related illness.
In a letter addressed to Kaya Marini, the councillor for a ward in the village, Mfiki wrote: "I can no longer continue with life ... because this community is laughing at me, humiliating me and my children because they say I have Aids."
Ntetho Gquwes, who discovered the bodies, said: "They were covered with a blanket, next to them was an empty container of milk and a knife."
Villagers said people suspected of having HIV were subject to humiliation.
Solokwane Mambanti said: "They are made to feel inferior and they are also called all sorts of names."
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