Hundreds attend funeral of 12-year-old Aids campaigner

Young Aids fighter Nkosi Johnson has been buried in South Africa after a week of mourning.

He was born with HIV and died at the age of 12.

He pleaded with South Africans to accept HIV-infected people and became internationally known when he addressed the opening of a UN Aids conference in Durban.

Aids has infected 11% of the population in South Africa and kills more and more people.

But Nkosi's funeral was unlike any other Aids funeral - seven TV-cameras scrambled around the small white and golden coffin for footage.

The cause of death played a lead role instead of being brushed over or kept a secret, as is common in a country where stigma remains fierce.

The Johannesburg church was filled to capacity with several hundred mourners, including former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda.

Attendants wore T-shirts emblazoned with the message Nkosi repeated again and again: "My friend with AIDS is still my friend."

Ruth Khumalo, Nkosi's maternal grandmother, asked people to understand that Nkosi's birth mother was not a bad parent.

But she was a young unemployed woman and could not afford to bring up the boy, so she was forced her to give her son away.

Gail Johnson became Nkosi's foster mother when he was two. His birth mother died of AIDS in 1997.

At the funeral, Bishop Mvume Dandala said: "Whatever else we do, please, sexuality is holy, Please, let's be responsible with our sexuality. I say, if you believe that condoms and other such practices will help, then please do it. Please be careful." Those who did not believe condoms were useful should abstain, he said.