Living through a miracle

Gwynne Dyer reports on a changing South Africa.

PATRICIA DE LILLE, leader of South Africa's Independent Democratic Party, took a very public HIV test as part of her campaign and challenged all the other candidates in the country's third democratic election today to do the same.

Not many will, for fear of embarrassing senior colleagues who dare not to do so: more than one-in-nine South Africans is HIV-positive. But then her whole campaign is based on outspoken and sometimes brazen challenges to the more established parties, and she stands no chance of winning a share of power anyway.