"Traditional safety nets are unraveling as more young adults die of AIDS-related illnesses. Families and communities can barely fend for themselves, let alone take care of the orphans," says Lagleder. The deep-rooted kinship systems that existed for centuries in Zululand have been frayed by caregivers who themselves are grappling with poverty, and the elderly, who need to lean on younger members for financial and physical assistance.

There's a fear among many that without greater intervention, a "lost generation" of HIV/AIDS orphans will grow up and get sucked into a damning emotional and psychological vacuum that will leave them uneducated, prone to crime and susceptible to sexual exploitation.

SAVING THE YOUTH

Increasingly, in South Africa, AIDS is an epidemic of young people. If current rates of infection go unchecked, half of the nation's 16 million youth younger than 20 will contract AIDS, a nightmare scenario that could claim the lives of 8 million teens. For youth between the ages of 12 and 17, one out of five in Mandeni will contract HIV.

The loveLife Y Centre, a three-year-old community association planted in the bosom of Mandeni, is South Africa's widest-reaching HIV-prevention program for youth.

Founded in 1999, the nonprofit organization is run by South Africa's Planned Parenthood Association. It has an influential international board that helps mold its broad campaign of blunt safe-sex messages, community development and educational initiatives. Its Y Centres - there are 16 in the whole country - have one purpose: to rescue teenagers from HIV.

The Mandeni center is run by Lulu Zwane, a small woman with a broad smile known as Mama Lulu. She often leaves her own family to spend 14-hour days at the center, recruiting volunteers, speaking with parents and getting tribal leaders to understand that they must encourage communication about safe sex.

In Mandeni, as in much of Africa, Mama Lulu must work harder to untether HIV/AIDS from the stigma and denial that has stifled prevention efforts and shrouded those living with the disease. Still, Zwane presses on promoting a positive lifestyle. "We want kids to know where they are headed," she says. "We want them to recognize that HIV is the issue of the day."

lovelife, which recruits teens from the streets and shopping centers, is making inroads. When the group did a national survey, more than 60 percent of teens said they have heard of the campaign and embrace its messages. The same survey also showed that more than 65 percent of teens said loveLife has taught them about HIV/AIDS and disease transmission. They also credit this ambitious campaign with teaching them other important lessons - how to talk openly with their parents about the deadly disease and how to strengthen their resolve to abstain from sex.

In Mandeni, more than 200 youth a day flock to the Y Centre, a one-story building with basketball courts, meeting rooms, a kitchen and space for health screenings. They are drawn to the center's computer room, youth-dedicated radio station and the positive energy that flows from the lively cadre of groundbreakers, or peer educators.

One of them is Msosi Mthembu, 22, a bright eager woman who credits the Y Centre with saving her life. At 19, Mthembu was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. She couldn't talk to her family - "I came from a home where you couldn't even say the word 'sex,'" she says - and she felt judged and shamed when she went to the local clinic for treatment. She found her way to the health clinic at the Y Centre. "The instructors loosened me up," says Mthembu. "They talked on [a teen's] level."

Mthembu found herself repeatedly drawn to the Y Centre, where she got healthy boosts to her self-esteem and straight talk about sexual myths. Gone is the belief that sex without a condom while standing up keeps a girl safe. Nixed was the saying that a virgin couldn't get pregnant from her first sexual experience and that drinking cocoa could flush away semen and halt a pregnancy.

"Now I don't have to wait for a man to get ready," she says. "They taught me to use the female condom." Mthembu has a new attitude, too. Despite peer pressure, she's decided not to be sexually active. "I can stand up to my friends who would say to me, 'Have sex now' and I'd say, 'I can't do that.' The Y Centre is wonderful. They really save lives."

Like many youth in Mandeni, Mthembu, one of four girls, was raised by a single mother. She's grown up in the dark shadow of AIDS. Two female cousins, ages 21 and 23, died from the disease last year, and so did a 19-year-old girlfriend.

Despite the AIDS deaths, says Mthembu, her family never talked about it. "They were ashamed. They always blamed the deaths on a bewitching." Fighting against such deeply rooted customs is one reason loveLife set up shop in Mandeni.

Sadly, the good fortune of an emerging anti-retrovirals campaign and growing awareness of negative cultural influences that fuel HIV will more than likely not have any affect on the lives of the 600 South Africans who die daily of AIDS-related complications. Khumbuzile CeIe is among them. Two weeks after her interview with this magazine in August 2003, the soft-spoken woman, who had shriveled to only 55 pounds, lost her fight against poverty and HIV and died in Blessed Gerard's hospice.

Men Unite to Fight Spread of AIDS

It's a balmy fall evening and Tom Mkhize is driving through rush-hour traffic in Durban. He's headed downtown to City Hall for an "imbizo," a Zulu gathering of men. The imbizo has always existed as a way to solve community crises. Now, men are using them to address AIDS.

Fifteen of them - a mix of Black African, Indian and Coloured - are meeting tonight. In South Africa, they represent a fresh wave of thinking. They want society to move beyond the public notion that men are "generators" of the HIV pandemic and recognize that men can be and are involved in halting the spread of HIV.

To do so, the group is in the nascent stages of forming Men in Partnership Against AIDS. It seeks to unite grassroots, professional, faith-based and other organizations to look at what men need to do to battle the swiftly moving pandemic.

According to studies from the South Africa Department of Health, there are 2 million men between the ages of 15 and 49 who have HIV.

Unfortunately, research does tie the rates to male behavior and socialization. Much of which can be traced to deeply held traditions that give men sexual authority in relationships.

For instance, it is common for men to request dry sex, where women use herbs or other treatments to make their vaginas tight during intercourse. The practice causes fissures in women making them more susceptible to HIV transmission.

"We will have to do the tough job of looking at ourselves," says Mkhize, a grassroots organizer for the health department who is charged with building health awareness in the rural patches of KwaZulu-Natal. "Women have been at the forefront [of prevention and awareness] and now it is time for men to step up."

The goal of Men in Partnership Against AIDS is to mobilize men in prevention, treatment and support care, human and legal rights issues, and research. The effort is gaining national momentum. In Cape Town a year ago, more than 400 men met in a highly spirited national "imbizo" to engage men in the struggle. The Durban area is the first big city district to actively embrace the follow up on that initiative.

"To change the mindset on HIV," says Rabi Gobind, an African National Congress councilman for the Durban metropolitan area, "men need to start with themselves and in their homes."

What's needed, says Gobin, are men who are willing to speak out about the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Gobin believes men can share with each other how to fight against drug and alcohol abuse, how to confront traditional healers and tell them "you don't have the right to sleep with my wife" in the name of healing her, and how to educate sons not to be abusive.

McDonald Tau, 33, one of the young men at the City Hall imbizo, has spent time caring for AIDS patients. Some were so sick, he says, you could see the blood in their eyes. But many men, Tau says, have not changed their attitudes. "They say 'I was born from sex. I enjoy it and if I die from it, it is not a problem.'"

Four young men at the imbizo are a part of the Sekusile Social Movement, which means dawning or awakening.

Sipho Mdanda, 29, is one of those men. He has been HIV positive since 1998, discovering his status when he sought a life insurance policy. The group led Mdanda, a former truck driver, to a doctor and provided him with counseling in his township, KwaMashu. He went on to be trained as an HIV counselor and now helps with a support group that draws up to 90 people, many of them men, to its weekly meetings.

The imbizo and Sekusile are important, says Mdanda, because "it's going to take men and women to build an AIDS-free generation."

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