The great statesman summoned the world’s media to the front door of his home in Johannesburg to announce that his only surviving son, Makgatho, 54, had succumbed to the virus.

His country’s elite refuses to acknowledge the enormous death toll caused by HIV/Aids. But the former South African President, 86 and increasingly frail, found the strength to admit that his family, like so many others in South Africa, had lost a loved one to Aids.

“We must not hide the cause of death of our respected families because that is the only way we can make people understand that HIV is an ordinary illness. That’s why we have called you today to announce that my son has died of Aids,” Mr Mandela said.

“I hope that as time goes on we will realise that it is important for us to talk openly about Aids . . . because (it is) the only way to make it appear normal, like cancer.”

Mr Mandela said that he had argued in favour of breaking the taboo surrounding the disease for years, long before he knew that his son was suffering from Aids.

Makgatho, a lawyer, had been receiving treatment for several months. His wife, Zondi, died of pneumonia, one of the diseases that affect Aids sufferers, in 2003.

Mr Mandela, who was surrounded by family members yesterday, cancelled several engagements during the past month to remain close to his ailing son. He has three daughters, one from his first marriage, and two from his second marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Mr Mandela lost his first son, Madiba Thembekile, in a car crash in 1969.

Despite the mounting toll from Aids, and some five million cases — the highest HIV/Aids caseload in the world — few public figures have come forward to say that Aids has affected their families.

In the early 1990s Zambia’s founding father, Kenneth Kaunda, became the first senior African politician to admit losing a family member to the disease when he said publicly that a son who died in 1986 had had Aids. Dr Kaunda is now one of Africa’s main Aids campaigners.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the veteran South African politician of the Inkatha Freedom Party, also helped to break the silence over Aids deaths in the country last year when he said that two of his children had died from related causes.

The most famous death from Aids in the country was that of 12-year-old Nkosi Johnson, who had been orphaned by Aids. His case at first shamed the nation, but later came to symbolise the country’s profound Aids crisis.

Yesterday Aids activists were quick to applaud Mr Mandela’s decision to go public with the cause of his son’s death. Grant Law, of the Topsy Foundation, said that one of the best ways of erasing the stigma attached to the disease was the involvement of the family. “We applaud Mandela for coming out in this way and making Aids a family issue,” he said.

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