Wall Street Journal - June 13, 2009
Stephen Miller

Ms. Ngubane (N-gu-Ba-nay) died on June 4 at age 24, but her voice had already been heard by millions of radio listeners around the world. In "Thembi's AIDS Diary," broadcast in English in 2006 on National Public Radio in the U.S., and then in the U.K., Australia, Canada and South Africa, she told how each morning she awoke to address her disease by name.

"I say, 'Hello, HIV, you trespasser. You are in my body. You have to obey the rules. You have to respect me, and if you don't hurt me, I won't hurt you. You mind your business, I'll mind mine. Then I'll give you a ticket when your time comes.' "

The diary later was translated from English into Zulu and Xhosa, Ms. Ngubane's first language. She became a celebrity for defying the stigma the disease still carries in much of South African society.

"Accept the idea that AIDS is here," she urged in a 2007 appearance before the South African Parliament, speaking to a nation where the government has been slow to provide antiretroviral medicine, preventive measures against transmission are spotty and an estimated 1,000 people die of AIDS each day. One in six adults -- more than five million people in all -- are infected with HIV in South Africa, including nearly 30% of pregnant mothers, according to statistics from the United Nations and the South African government. Ms. Ngubane put a human face on those demographics.

Ms. Ngubane was raised in Khayelitsha, a township outside Cape Town that is home to about two million people. In secondary school she learned English. This, plus her HIV status, helped catch the attention of Joe Richman, a U.S. radio producer who was collecting stories from teenage AIDS victims in the townships.

"She was smart and perceptive and self-reflective in a way that many people aren't," says Mr. Richman, who won an Overseas Press Club Award for the broadcast. He estimates that "Thembi's AIDS Diary" was heard by some 50 million listeners.

After being infected by a boyfriend, Ms. Ngubane fell in love and ended up infecting a subsequent boyfriend before she was diagnosed with HIV at 16. The couple had a daughter, Onwabo, who isn't infected, though she has been treated for the drug-resistant tuberculosis that killed Ms. Ngubane. "Thembi's AIDS Diary" includes Ms. Ngubane's pride in motherhood, her anguish at having infected her boyfriend and a fraught yet tender scene in which she reveals her disease to her father.

While suffering from full-blown AIDS, Ms. Ngubane began speaking out on AIDS awareness and prevention in classrooms. Students would mob her afterward seeking autographs. In 2006, with the help of Mr. Richman, she came to the U.S., where she spoke at churches and appeared alongside former President Bill Clinton on a CNN "Global Summit" on ending AIDS. In 2007, she served as a Unicef ambassador at health conferences in Germany and India. Perhaps inevitably, given her celebrity status, she was a contestant last year on a reality TV show, "Imagine Afrika."

Ms. Ngubane lived as long as she did in part because of a Doctors Without Borders program that distributes free antiretrovirals in Khayelitsha. She is survived by Onwabo, her boyfriend and her mother, who cared for Ms. Ngubane when she was ill.

"My mother has clothed me, fed me, raised me," Ms. Ngubane says in her diary. "And now, at the end of the day, she must also bury me."

* Email remembrances@wsj.com

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