Sunday, August 30, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
HIV/AIDS: Mandela Charm Shines at Conference
Moyiga Nduru
- A frail-looking but persuasive Nelson Mandela urged world leaders to increase funding to combat HIV/ AIDS and to raise global awareness about the dangers of the disease.
Speaking at the 15th International AIDS Conference on Thursday, the former South African president took the opportunity to introduce his 46664 Global Campaign a programme he started last November to focus attention on HIV/AIDS.
The six-day conference in the Thai capital has attracted over 15,000 delegates.
”My prison number on Robben Island (near Cape Town in South Africa) was 46664. Despite the efforts of the apartheid regime to reduce us to prison numbers and so reduce our humanity, the world did not forget us,” Mandela said.
The 46664 Global Campaign, he said, will focus on creating more international awareness, advocating for and supporting care, treatment and prevention, and intensifying efforts to raise urgently needed funds.
”As former prisoner number 466664, there is a special place in my heart for all those that are denied access to their basic human rights,” Mandela told delegates at the conference.
He said American singer Dionne Warwick had joined the 46664 campaign as an ambassador, while Richard Gere, a Hollywood actor-turned-activist, has also gone on board.
On Thursday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a 50 million U.S. dollar contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
But Mandela said that much more funding was needed.
Earlier in the day, Mandela’s sudden appearance at a news conference had caught many journalists off guard.
The media had been expecting him to speak on Wednesday, but instead his wife, Graca Machel, chaired a panel on the activities of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Johannesburg
This sent a confused signal that the 86-year-old statesman might not have been able to make it to Bangkok.
Mandela, South Africa’s first black president had announced his retirement from public life at the end of May.
”Don’t call me; I will call you,” he had said then, explaining that he would be spending more time at his rural home, reflecting, attending to family and friends and writing a second book about his life since he was released in 1990 after 27 years in prison.
His appearance at the media center of the AIDS conference thus caused frenzy, as photographers and journalists scrambled for a space in the crammed conference room.
Amid a tight police escort, Mandela was greeted with deafening applause and a standing ovation from all present.
Then the world’s most famous political prisoner got down to business. He delivered a one-page statement on ”Confronting the Joint HIV-TB Epidemics”, at a conference session organised by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
”We cannot win the battle against AIDS if we do not also fight TB (tuberculosis). TB is too often a death sentence for people with AIDS,” Mandela stated.
He said doctors have known how to cure TB for more than 50 years.
”What we have lacked is the will and the resources to quickly diagnose people with TB and get them the treatment they need,” he said.
He expressed delight that the Gates Foundation had announced a 44.7 million U.S. dollar grant to support the Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS-TB Epidemic (CREATE) – comprising a body of international agencies.
”I hope this research will give us new weapons to fight TB in places that have been hard hit by AIDS,” Mandela said.
Because HIV weakens the immune system, people with the virus are especially vulnerable to tuberculosis, and TB rates have increased significantly in countries with a high HIV/AIDS prevalence.
Of the estimated 1.6 million deaths caused by tuberculosis annually, one quarter occur among people living with HIV/AIDS.
Tuberculosis is now the leading killer of people with HIV worldwide, according to Helene Gayle, director of the HIV, TB, and Reproductive Health programme at the Gates Foundation.
The Foundation’s figures show that 14 million people in the world are infected with both HIV and TB, and 70 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
During the news conference, Mandela acknowledged the presence of Zambian campaigner Winstone Zulu, a TB survivor, who shared a platform with him.
”There have been so few TB survivors who have stepped forward to share their stories. We need more advocates like Winstone to tell the world about TB and the effect it has on so many millions of people,” he said.
Mandela, himself, is no stranger to TB.
”I was in jail (1964-1990) when they took a specimen of my sputum and sent it to hospital. I was diagnosed with TB,” he said.
”When the report came back from hospital they indicated that fortunately they sent the specimen before there were holes in the lung,” added Mandela.
”It would take only about four months to treat the TB if I treated it correctly. I went to my friends in prison, and told them that I was found to have the TB germ. There were long faces drawn,” he revealed.
Mandela said his prison mates objected to him sharing his personal effects with them.
”But I consoled them and told them that the doctors and hospital staff knew about my status. And, I, therefore, had no reason to hide this information from those close to me,” he said.
”I underwent treatment and was completely cured after four months,” added Mandela.
Mandela was accompanied to Bangkok by his loyal personal assistant, Zelda la Grange, an Afrikaner, whose kinsmen introduced apartheid and jailed him on Robben Island for opposing the system.
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