''Khabzela: The Life And Times Of A South African'' is a bestselling 2005 biography written by South African author Liz McGregor about South African

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...

Fana Khaba (known as "Khabzela"), who died from AIDS. Khabzela was popular among listeners to

Yfm YFM (99.2 FM) is a "Youth" radio station in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 1997, the station is formatted to mostly play urban music genres such as Kwaito, Hip Hop, and R&B along with a minority of its airtime being dedicated to ...

, a youth radio station in

Gauteng Gauteng ( ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name in Sotho-Tswana languages means 'place of gold'. Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts for only ...

Synopsis

The book recounts how the author, Liz McGregor, was asked while working as a freelance journalist for '' Poz'' magazine to write a story about a black celebrity infected with

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

. When Khabzela announced on the radio in April 2003 that he was infected, he seemed to make an ideal subject. McGregor interviewed him, wrote the story for ''Poz'', and then went on to write the biography because, as she put, the story "got under my skin". McGregor tells how Khabzela rose to fame in post-apartheid South Africa, enjoying relative fame and wealth and leading a hedonistic and promiscuous lifestyle. Following his infection with HIV, Khabzela initially took

antiretroviral medication Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used for treating viral infections. Most antivirals target specific viruses, while a broad-spectrum antiviral is effective against a wide range of viruses. Unlike most antibiotics, antiviral drugs do n ...

s but then, beset by a "bevy of faith healers and purveyors of magical drugs", he was persuaded to abandon his treatment and pursue quack remedies instead. Khabzela died in January 2004. Towards the end of the book, McGregor includes the medical records detailing Khabzela's final days.

Shula Marks Shula Eta Marks, OBE, FBA (born 14 October 1938, in Cape Town) is emeritus professor of history at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. She has written at least seven books and a WHO monograph on Health and A ...

calls these "stark and terrifying".

Critical reception

For Shula Marks, the biography shows that ambivalence towards medical treatment of AIDS was not just the result of the dubious dictates of the

Thabo Mbeki Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki KStJ (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who was the second president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress (ANC ...

government, but also stemmed from ingrained attitudes in the wider South African public. Maurice Taonezvi Vambe and Anthony Chennells write that ''Khabzela'' raises interesting questions about the boundary between biography and autobiography, since it describes not only the subject's life but also recounts the author's experiences of meeting him. Nogwaja Shadrack Zulu writes that beyond the surface narrative of the biography, the book explores the politics around AIDS in 1990s South Africa and raises questions about the consequences of

AIDS denialism HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while oth ...

at that time. Zulu considers that the biography refocuses on AIDS as predominantly a medical issue and acts as a critique of the deceptive "African solution" whereby ineffective remedies – such as the

African potato ''Hypoxis hemerocallidea'', the African star grass or African potato, is a medicinal plant in the Hypoxidaceae family. It is native to southern Africa from South Africa as far north as Mozambique and Zimbabwe. This plant is the best known member ...

– were touted by governmental authorities as an effective form of treatment.

Jonny Steinberg Jonny Steinberg (born 22 March 1970) is a South African writer and scholar. He is the author of several books about everyday life in the wake of South Africa's transition to democracy. Two of them, ''Midlands'' (2002), about the murder of a white ...

sees the book as "investigative" and writes that it "lays open what is perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the IDSpandemic" – that even though the subject is talked of openly, it is something South Africa failed to engage with effectively. Gavin Steingo writes the McGregor cannot understand why Khabzela pursued a course that ended in his own death, and finds her proffered explanations – that he craved independence or wanted to retain the added attention that his illness brought – unconvincing.Steingo 2011, p. 359.

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Synopsis

Critical reception

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Further reading