Makgatho Mandela, 54

The global media is a Kabuki theater of exaggerated gestures. Headlines must somehow reaffirm or inflame preexisting beliefs and emotions, or they don't work. In AIDS, nothing is accurate or true anymore, but the Kabuki dance is understood by all-the stories are gestures.

Yesterday, the global headlines declared that Nelson Mandela's son had died of AIDS. They were loaded with subtext intended to reinforce emotions borne by the name "Mandela" and the word "AIDS." They are a political statement-a Kabuki gesture to rouse the crowds into favorable feelings toward Nelson Mandela and hostility toward his successor, Thabo Mbeki, who does not exploit AIDS for political gain or sentimental posturing.

Only one problem: Mandela's son did not die of AIDS. According to Makgatho Mandela's own brother-in-law, quoted in the Washington Post, 'the immediate cause of Makghato's death was complications from a gall bladder operation on Nov. 30.' He also said that Mandela had had trouble with his pancreas. This is a classic toxicity profile for a person who has been on anti-HIV drugs, which Mandela's brother in law, Dr. Isaac Amuah, confirmed that he had been, for over a year.

Follow the AIDS logic here: When the son of South Africa's most famous, iconic man dies, it becomes clear that he has been given "access" to the very anti-retroviral drugs that Mbeki is supposedly denying people. (Not true: Anybody who wants the drugs can get them.) When he nonetheless dies on the life-saving regimen, he is touted as having died of AIDS, despite having actually died of known toxicities from the drugs themselves. Then his father announces to the press that he wants to stress that his son died of AIDS in order to "demystify the disease" and make it "an ordinary disease, like any other."

Mandela must not have read-or must be in denial of-the recent press reports in which cocktail-therapy deaths are finally being called what they are: drug deaths.