OHANNESBURG - Hector was a nobody with few girls. And so he got them. For the price of a warm beer he had a bedtime partner every night. He'd boast of his conquests like so many boys in this country boast of their moves on green soccer fields.
Hector's dying now.
Colin found his women in the bars of Hillbrow, the section of Johannesburg where white liberals used to congregate during the mean days of apartheid. These days a lot of flesh gets peddled in Hillbrow. Colin found girl after girl after girl.
Colin's dying now.
Pete and Sonny Boy couldn't stop themselves from bedding women. Their fathers bedded many women. Sex and more sex was due them, they felt. A rite of passage.
Pete's dying now, and his girlfriend, Queen, is already dead. She lies in a township graveyard, right alongside their son, Manietjies, who was 6. They called him little Pete. Little Pete died four months ago of AIDS. Just like his mother.
The deaths made Sonny Boy blue. But he swears he'll save big Pete. Big Pete is skinny as wheat. One hundred and five pounds, and dropping. Sonny Boy needs some fresh fruit and vegetables for Pete, but doesn't have a dime in his pocket. Still, he believes in miracles. "I will care for Pete," Sonny Boy swears. "You will see."
Sonny Boy could use a miracle himself. He's dying too.
This is now the land of the dying and the dead. They're all victims of AIDS.
As the AIDS scourge sweeps a wicked path across the continent, health experts predict that 50 percent of all new infections in Africa will take place right here, in battle-torn South Africa.
"Most women in this country know their husbands or boyfriends have multiple partners," says Morna Cornell of the Johannesburg-based AIDS Consortium, a clearinghouse for organizations fighting the epidemic. Cornell estimates that in the next five to 10 years, 3.5 million people will die of AIDS in South Africa. "It's on a scale unimaginable to anybody else," she says.
Bart Cox, an AIDS activist here, says that "it's interesting to talk about promiscuity, but very risky, even dangerous. So many of these young black males feel a sense of entitlement. Meaning, if they see a woman as dressing sexy, they think they are entitled to her."
All tuckered out and dying, Pete hates that his sexual vigor is not what it used to be. Not that his new girlfriend knows he's infected. "I met her one day and had sex the following day," Pete says, letting a guilt-free smile flower across his face.
Hector Motsoengeng used to work with his grandfather, fixing cars. These days he doesn't work. At night he worries about a place to lay his head. His brother sometimes sneaks him into the military barracks where he serves, just outside Johannesburg.
Hector is sitting in a bare room at a little clinic on the grounds of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Hector, 28, comes for moral support.
"We have no medicine, but we do have condoms," says Tsietsi Raburabu, a social worker at the clinic.
"It is hard to say who infected me, because I had a lot of girlfriends," Hector says.
A couple of years ago his skin started to break out. "My friends said, `You have the AIDS.' I said, `What do you mean?' " He's already lost an eye to the disease.
Hector, like virtually all Africans, can't afford dosages of AZT, the powerful drug that can prolong the life of AIDS sufferers. Hector says if he could, he wouldn't take the drug anyway. "I don't want my body to get used to drugs," he explains.
At various points while growing up, Hector says he had as many as seven girls at the same time.
"It was easy for me to get girlfriends," he says. "I was playing soccer at school. In South Africa, it's easy to have sex. You go to a shebeen (bar), buy a girl one beer, and you look at her and say, `You have to pay me for the beer.' You go to sleep with her."
Hector says pressure from his friends was always intense. "When we grew up - always around other boys - it was peer pressure to have sex," he says. "I used to tell myself, `I want one girlfriend,' but if she's not available when I want it, I want another girl. We grew up telling ourselves, `If you have one girlfriend, you're not man enough.' "
Hector had a core group of about a dozen male friends, he says. "We all used to do the same things. We used to exchange girlfriends. We grew up in that situation. All of my girlfriends were nice. They didn't know I had other partners. I would lie. I would say to them, `You are the only one.' "
He has settled on one girlfriend now. "She knows about my status," he says, referring to AIDS. "She says she doesn't want to go for a test. She said she'd rather not know. It's a coping thing. A lot of people who are HIV-positive have committed suicide."
The myths about AIDS won't go away.
You can walk along some of the dirt-covered roads in Soweto and notice dishes on the windowsills outside. "They're forced by their families to keep their bowls outside the house, like a dog's bowl," Gloria Sidyiyo, an AIDS counselor at the Jabavu Clinic in Soweto, says about some AIDS sufferers and their families.
Sidyiyo's clinical staff numbers 10, and of those 10, five are HIV-positive. "At times I say, `God doesn't love South Africa.' "
They have 1,800 beds at Johannesburg General Hospital. Two out of three of the patients in those beds have AIDS. Some are forced to sleep on trolleys. They're losing 15 a day to the epidemic at the hospital.
"You are preparing to see a patient," says Sally Mbulaheni, a nurse at a medical-legal clinic on the grounds of the hospital, "and you go away for a moment, and when you come back to them, they are a corpse."
It is the land of the dead and dying.
Lettie Davis is the kind of old South African woman who, in the days under apartheid, prayed her way from day to day, who raised her kids in fear, and who wondered if she, or they, would ever see the great Nelson Mandela while he was locked away in prison. Now this. Now freedom, and AIDS, and tears because her son Colin is dying.
"When I talk, I just can't help dropping my tears," Lettie Davis says. "A mother hopes, you know."
Colin Davis spends a lot of his time in a bedroom of the home he shares with his mother and father and sister. He listens to a lot of gospel music. "I pray a lot," he says. "That's my only hope."
His sister has asked Colin to confine himself to certain sections of the house because she fears catching the disease. Colin's mother, wanting to keep peace, asks Colin to respect the desires of his sister.
Of her seven children, Lettie Davis says Colin is special. Lettie was born in Port Elizabeth, the old port city on the Indian Ocean. It was an impoverished upbringing. "I lost my parents when I was young," she says. "I couldn't get more schooling than standard 6 (high school). I said, `My children are not going to suffer.' And now, here my child is like this today. He's an educated man. He's lived with whites. The missionairies wanted to take Colin to America to be a preacher." She turns away, wipes a tear. "I can't talk too much. I talk, I cry."
When he was first diagnosed, Colin didn't tell his mother and father. Then he started losing weight. He looked as if his body were trying to hide inside its own bones.
Some nights, when Colin gets to coughing, Lettie spreads a blanket for herself on the floor next to his bed and sleeps next to him, as if he might vanish in the night. There is a pink blanket on Colin's bed. His bedroom is tidy. In its own way, even beautiful.
"I got involved with various girls," Colin says, out of earshot of his mother. "My problem was I never used protection. I was reckless."
He says getting the women was easy. "It's easy if you have a little bit of money," he says. "Even if you don't have much, long as you have something."
At one time, Colin, who is 38, said he had five different sexual partners. "They weren't actual prostitutes, but they lived loosely," he admits. "They would only be too happy to have someone buy them food or beers."
He rarely goes out now. No friends come to visit. "I've accepted I cannot get involved with any lady in a sexual manner," he says.
Colin carries a tiny diary. In it, he keeps his appointments at the clinic. He takes Bactrim, an antibiotic. It's to keep down other illnesses, but it hasn't worked very well. He's had pneumonia and TB. Now, in addition to his AIDS, he's been having heart problems.
And so, here they are, seated together, mother and son, Lettie and Colin, in a huge open room at the Johannesburg Hospital. Before day's end, about 500 other AIDS sufferers will come and go. Sometimes you stand in line and the clinic closes, at 4 o'clock. There is nothing to do but come back another day.
But Colin, who needs a pair of stainless steel crutches to help drive his weak legs, is lucky. After several hours, he sees his doctor. He gets some more antibiotics. His T-cell count is 174. Any count under 200 is considered dangerously low. Afterwards, Colin hobbles upstairs to the 7th floor of the hospital and enters a room where he is given food in a bag to carry home. He leaves gratefully.
"If it wasn't for his mother," says Jenny Marcus, an AIDS volunteer at the hospital's clinic, "he would have been gone long ago. She's seen him at death's door. She's been brilliant. She's fussed over him every waking moment."
"Do they have this disease in America?" Lettie Davis wants to know.
Of all the townships stretched across this vast land, Soweto, on the southwestern edge of Johannesburg, remains the best known. But Alexandra, a few miles north of the city, has always been the harshest. The white apartheid government used to swoop into Alexandra and yank black gangsters out, then hang them from the gallows up in Pretoria.
Even now, the township's swagger bedevils the black government. There are, indeed, law-abiding citizens in Alexandra. It's just that those in the squatter camps scattered throughout the township refuse to budge. Nowadays, ambulance drivers enter Alexandra with police escort. The township has turned into a carjacker's haven. The danger keeps a lot of AIDS counselors from coming.
But Venash Murugan is an exception.
"Everyone says they're scared driving into the township," Murugan says while driving into the township. "If something's going to happen, it's going to happen."
He's rolling down a road, past some scattering goats, to see Sonny Boy Khumalo and Pete Mogapi.
"You'll meet Sonny Boy. A fantastic person, a lovely person," Murugan says. "At one point, we thought we were going to lose Sonny Boy. He was quite on the bad side."
Murugan says Sonny Boy lied to get girls, telling them he owned a business, that he could provide jobs. The girls hopped into bed with him. "Sonny Boy is still sleeping around," Murugan says. "I know there was a time he wasn't using condoms. Basically, he couldn't afford condoms. Still, I know so many friends who say, `Why should I wear a condom?' They say, `I want flesh to flesh.' "
Murugan enters the local clinic. A security guard locks the gate. Sonny Boy is here, but Pete is not.
Sonny Boy Khumalo is 41 years old. He has worked as a gas station attendant and a machine operator. He has a wife and four kids. He's wearing a multicolored sweater, slacks, and scuffed-up shoes. He's been HIV-positive for three years. Mary is his wife. "She's afraid to get tested," he says.
"When I was growing up I had five girlfriends," Sonny Boy adds.
Sonny Boy says he is trying to keep his illness a secret. He's petrified that his only sister might find out. "She'll tell every Dick, Tom, and Harry," he says.
Murugan asks Sonny Boy if he is seeing women other than his wife. "No," Sonny Boy says.
"I don't believe you," Murugan says.
Sonny Boy laughs awkwardly.
Sonny Boy and Murugan are worried about Pete. His cell count has been dropping steadily for the past few weeks. Pete had an appointment in Johannesburg and missed it.
Sonny Boy and Murugan hop in the car to find Pete. Sonny Boy finds Pete's sister and she goes to get Pete, scooting off between an expanse of low-ceilinged shacks. Pete's coming now, a stalk of a man with honey-brown skin and exhausted eyes.
Pete Mogapi is 36 years old.
"When I cough," Pete says, "blood comes up." He is recovering from a bout of diarrhea and the flu. He lives with his aunt and three sisters. Pete says he can't get any sleep at night. "I hear gunshots. Every night," he says.
Murugan grows angry that Pete has been missing appointments at the clinic. "If you don't come to the hospital, you know I'm not scared to come in here and I will give you a good spanking," Murugan says to Pete.
Pete's home is tiny. Even in daylight, it is dark. The toilet is outside. The conditions aren't sanitary. Sonny Boy wants some fresh vegetables for Pete, but the best he might be able to do is some goat meat his father is grilling outside. Sonny Boy's father is wearing white patent leather shoes.
Sonny Boy tells Murugan not to worry, that he will get Pete to the clinic.
Soon Murugan is in his car. "It's best to get out of here before sunset," he says.
Driving, Venash Murugan gets to talking about his own life. He is from India. In the days of apartheid, he walked around with an Italian passport. He tried to pass. The white restaurants wouldn't seat him. He feels left out by history's changes. "In the old South Africa I wasn't white enough," he says. "In the new South Africa, I'm not black enough."
He earned money modeling. He got married - to a man. (Later he'll exuberantly share the newsclippings with a visitor). The marriage didn't last. Now he has a new lover.
Venash Murugan also has AIDS.
"I'm not afraid of dying," he says. "I just don't want to suffer."
Every day, hundreds of cars and pedestrians pass the white house a mile from downtown Johannesburg and have no idea that there are bodies buried in the backyard.
It's called St. Christopher's. William Longman runs the house. It's full of tender mercies.
It's a house for men with AIDS who have nowhere else to go. Their families have mostly shunned them.
Longman sits on a sofa, puffing a cigarette. He says the home depends on charitable contributions. "Woolworth's gives us their expired food," he says of a local grocery store. "Some days you'll get 100 cabbages and nothing else."
A local mortician volunteers his services free. Even if Longman calls him in the middle of the night, the man bounces from bed, comes to pick up the body, and drives it away.
Ten men currently live at the house. There is only one black. The residents are asked to pay a nominal fee, the equivalent of $30 a month. "The blacks can't afford that," says Longman.
In this land, a lot still comes down to black and white. Cornelius Monaheng, 28, is the sole black occupant of St. Christopher's. He says he contracted AIDS from a girl from Zimbabwe whom he met on the streets and fell in love with. "I'm sure you are aware that in Zimbabwe one in four people are infected with AIDS," he says, in a tone filled with both awe and sadness.
On the day Monaheng went to the hospital to get his test results, he says he was worried and fearful. "It was a Monday," he recalls. "There are professional counselors there. I waited until it was my turn. I went into the room to hear my results. The counselors asked me if I wanted them to tell me the results or if I wanted to read it for myself. I said for them to read it to me. Then I was told I was positive. Hell started into my life that day."
He floundered on the streets. He grew angry. A nurse rescued him and helped get him into St. Christopher's.
Now he finds himself changing the diapers of dying Afrikaners. "As a black person," he says, "I've been very strong to them."
There are no funds to provide for proper burials of those who die at St. Christopher's, Longman says, so they settle on cremations. Then the ashes of the dead are placed in a little decorative box and the box is buried in the backyard. Longman asks the residents which color flower they'd like to have over their grave - green or purple.
Longman is in the backyard now, pointing. "This is Jan. This is John. This is Chris. This is Warren. He died in January of '99. We had three that month."
Sunlight is falling through the trees. He moves to another part of the yard.
"Here we have Robert. Then we have Peter. And this one is Steven. Here we have Danny. And, there, Lionel."
Tiptoeing across the land of the dead and the dying, staring into the ground, he finishes: "And there, Mitch and Lionel."
Most were partial to the purple flowers.
Part 1
