Each year the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers highlights sixteen women, men and organizations that standout in the fight against gender violence. Representing November 30th, is:
Prudence Mabele
One in Nine Campaign and Positive Women’s Network
Johannesburg, South Africa
HIV Positive Activist
Prudence is an HIV positive activist, and a leading advocate for people living with HIV & AIDS. She is widely known as one of the first black women to declare publicly her HIV positive status in South Africa. In 1996, Prudence founded the Positive Women’s Network, an organization focused on empowerment of HIV positive women. She was instrumental in the formation of the South Africa branch of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa (SWAA). Since 2007, Prudence has been one of the key figures in the South African One in Nine Campaign, which advocates for policy changes to address violence against women and HIV/AIDS. A traditional healer, Prudence has also worked extensively with local grassroots’ groups and communities. “HIV/AIDS will not stop me from achieving my goals and inspiring others to reach theirs.”
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/kit08/exhibit/mabele.html
Prudence Mabele does not currently have a page in the English version of Wikipedia, though she is listed as a 1999 Recipient of the Felipa de Souza Award.
When Mabele discovered she had HIV, she was working toward a degree in analytical chemistry in South Africa. Due to the misunderstanding of the disease, she was told to abandon her studies for fear she would infect others.
In finding that friends and family were not willing to support HIV positive people she, with 59 other people began a support group, called the “Positive Women’s Network” (PWN).
UNAIDS has identified South Africa as the county with the highest number of infected women in the world, and in 2004, one in three pregnant mothers receiving antenatal testing were positive for HIV.
The official government stance was that death were occurring due to malnutrition and poverty, yet an estimated 5 million people are estimated to be infected and there are an estimated 1.2 million orphans as a result. Only in 2007, due to international pressure, did the government begin to make change. In the mean time, activists have been tortured, raped and killed.
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International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
Women and AIDS in South Africa: A Conflicted History Leads to a Dispiriting
The Positive Women’s Network-IDEX Partnership – The PWN – IDEX Partnership
I Own My Vote, PUMA, The Denver Group, Just Say No Deal
Grab and Keel 
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