Out of the Closet: Redefining and Defying the Epidemic

By Dr. Q.P. Diale and Vutlhari Tlakula

Describes the authors life as a Christian, how he contracted and was
diagnosed with HIV. A brutally honest, sometimes humorous, novelstyle
narration of events in his life that led to him contracting the dreaded
condition despite his Christian background, how he responded to the
diagnosis, dealt with it, and how he lives in continuous victory over the
condition. His is a true story of infi delity, intrigue, disillusionment, divine
encounters and victorious attitude. You will be inspired to laugh at any
life-threatening condition you may face in life. With him you will ride a
roller-coaster of temptation to like him, and then hate him, and then hail
his resilience.
With South Africa holding the title of having the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence
in the world, there is still very much denial in the existence, and manageability
of the disease. This is an applaud-ably bold step taken by Tlakula, opening
doors to our society to face the feared and dreaded disease and adopt a different
perspective, approach and overall outlook towards the epidemic.
- Dr Q.P. Diale, Pretoria West Hospital

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jun 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462849116

Dr. Q.P. Diale

Vutlhari Tlakula is the founder of Vutlhari Tlakula Ministries. He is a professional teacher and Master of Business Administration. He is a prophetic teacher of the Word of God, an editor, as well as a business, non-profi t organisations, and church administration consultant. He was born again in 1984 at age 14, and in 2006 experienced a lifechanging encounter with God, which infl uenced the direction of his prophetic and teaching ministry. He presents the truth of the Word of God with passion and conviction in what he believes in. He is based in Limpopo Province, South Africa.

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Copyright © 2011 by Vutlhari Tlakula.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4628-8270-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-4911-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotation taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Foreword

Preface

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Annexure A

Annexure B

DEDICATION

I dedicate this work first and foremost to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the love that passes all understanding lavished upon me, and the comfort wherewith I am able to comfort others.

To my loving family.

To all people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and all other so-called chronic conditions throughout the world.

To all health workers engaged with victims of HIV/AIDS.

Foreword

A walk in a man’s life. Get it from the horse’s mouth. It is not easy in our day and age for a man to summon up so much courage to tell it like it is. We live in a global society that is characterized by pride and an exaggerated need for privacy. As a medical practitioner, I come across many people that are under the grip of fear and uncertainty about what they need to do with their lives when confronted with situations that are dreadful, like being infected with HIV. People live in fear even of their closest relatives and friends finding out that they are victims of HIV. In most cases the fear and worry associated with it are the main causes of premature deaths, whereas it is possible to live a long and fulfilled life if one liberates himself by coming out just like Tlakula did.

Granted, the stigma around HIV is still rife in the society, but it still remains with the individual to deal with it instead of living in perpetual torment. Being true to oneself is the first step towards a liberated life. Running away and trying to hide from adverse situations is the wrong way of dealing with it. Fear creates an invisible prison that one actually creates for himself and locks himself in. It also creates a favorable breeding ground for many other diseases that will further complicate one’s life and lead to premature death. Medical science has so far taken strides enough to help victims to manage the infection, but the other half of the job still remains with the victims to manage their lives positively and emerge victoriously on the other side. You may have the best medications available in the world today, but if you do not invite yourself to cooperate with the medication through self-liberation, that medication’s effects will be short-circuited.

In this book, Tlakula very honestly addresses real life issues, showing us that whatever it is you may be going through, you are not alone and should never feel that way. He boldly redefines and subsequently defies the whole issue of HIV. I call this a rare and probably unprecedented pioneering spirit, which if adopted, we would see a different society emerging out of enclosures that have kept us captives for so long. It has been a pleasure for me to deal with a patient with the attitude that Tlakula has towards the scourge. When he requested me to look through his work I considered it an honor second to none. I saw him faithfully attending his consultations, and amidst a lot of pain never allowing himself to let the situation depress him. I believe it is every doctor’s wish to come across patients that are so easy to deal with as he is.

You may not be able to write a book like he did, but the least you can do is accept the challenge set before you by this author. It will never surprise me to see him outliving most people that are not even HIV-positive. The key to his ever-increasing improvement is his faith and ‘offensive’ attitude towards his enemy—HIV. He puts himself in a position where he takes full responsibility for the actions in his life, turning a deaf ear to what other people may think and say about him. I can say that the man has very successfully conquered and subdued his world. I had never known it until I read through his manuscript that he is a man who highly regards God in his life. Yet, we still need to live to see men and women of God come out so clean about their private lives, failures and weaknesses. I believe that it is one very powerful weapon of evangelism that the world has for so long been deprived of. Through his story he makes every reader realize that Christianity is not as difficult as it has been made out to be. He makes it a life so attainable to everyone, which is what I also believe is the way God has designed it to be for all of us. Relating his struggles with temptation and how he ultimately overcame is such a refreshing and reviving testimony.

Read and learn from the lessons learnt, and milestones achieved. This book is an insightful piece, beautifully written, certain to leave you having grown not only spiritually, but medically and socially as well.

With South Africa holding the title of having the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence in the world, there is still very much denial in the existence, and manageability of the disease. This is an applaud-ably bold step taken by Tlakula, opening doors to our society to face the feared and dreaded disease and adopt a different perspective, approach and overall outlook towards the epidemic. I sometimes wish it could be prescribed as a valuable tool in our schools to educate our youth on the damaging myths created by society surrounding HIV. I am deeply challenged by and salute his courage.

Dr Qinisile P. Diale

Medical Practitioner,

Faranani Clinic, Pretoria West Hospital, South Africa.

Preface

Writing this work was an amazing experience for me. I did not keep proper records of my life in a way that I would easily recall as it is done in this work. Yet, the memories of my life’s events came rushing through my mind as clearly as if I was watching a movie of my own life. This became proof to me that the story needed to be told. Every little detail in this work is true to the dot. There was no better way to present it than brutal honesty. It no longer became a matter of what you will think about me, but how you will benefit from it. Each day I worked on this book, the more convinced I felt in my heart that I needed to get this work out as soon as I could. But I honestly tell you that you do not want to go through what I have experienced if you can help it. Some narrations may move you to tears, while others may make you feel like punching me in the face. Whichever way, please just go along, without having to feel pity for me or allowing yourself to be moved to unnecessary anger.

I want to indicate at this stage that some of the names of certain characters that appear in this work have been changed as a deliberate act to protect their identity and direct connection to the events told in the story. Whilst I acknowledge that it is not always possible to fully conceal the identity of such characters, all reasonable care has been applied to avoid tempering with such characters’ reputations without altering the true content of the story narrated. I also believe that you will judge the disclosure of such information about my co-characters to be neutral and unbiased. In this work, I portray myself as both the hero, if you will, and the villain of the whole plot. Yet, I beg you to bear in mind that the story told in this work is no result of imagination or fiction, as there are records or documents to prove the validity of the story—I have never yet experimented with my ability to cook up fictitious stories, and believe me when I state that you will be the first to know if I do.

Please take further note that all events related in this work about my life are those that mattered the most and shaped the direction that my life took. All irrelevant and unnecessary information has been omitted in order to save space and time; and like they say, ‘no news is good news,’ I believe that is the attitude in which it should be received.

After going through this work, I trust that you will have the courage to face your own dilemmas, some of which may be very admonishing to others. Some narrations may appear irrelevant to the story, but trust me, every one of those is a building block to the whole. So, enjoy reading, and should you have any comments about the work, feel free to drop an e-mail message at the address provided. And yes, why don’t you recommend a copy to friends, colleagues and to whomever you think is directly or indirectly affected by issues discussed in this work? You might just save a life.

It is the prayer of my heart that reading this work will birth in you a new hope—if it was lost—for your life and the lives of others infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS, as well as any other dreaded and/or so-called chronic disease. I fully believe that it is inherent in every person who will dare to believe to change any kind of situation or circumstance besetting them, instead of them being changed by the circumstances. I believe this because I know that you as a person are an extremely mighty force that can undo any circumstance if you can only believe.

Finally, I want to convey my sincere and deepest gratitude to the doctors that were involved in my treatment program, from both the Germiston and Pretoria West State Hospitals, and in particular Doctors Q.P. Diale and Z. Makatini for their invaluable input in this work, for patiently helping to clarify other medical issues I needed to know.

Enjoy it; but above all, learn from it.

The Author.

One

Coming up to the desktop to start on the work that resulted in this book was a real mission. I was at a stage where I could hardly walk without feeling excruciating pains in my feet due to the disease that I was suffering from at that moment. But hey, this work kept my mind off the pains, if you know what I mean, and helped me to cope. My about-to-be six years old son—who bears my name—had to bunk church then; and how helpful he was to me, bringing this over here and taking that out there.

I was born a sibling of five, and interestingly had two birthdays to my life—what a joke! Very strange how some of these things can happen. My father and mother have passed on at this stage. Now how they failed to keep proper records of my birth is beyond me, but it happened. My official date of birth, which later reflected on my identity document and all other official records, was October 5, 1971; whilst my actual birth date, which was discovered much later in my life, was April 10, 1970. The official date of birth was allocated to me by one of my primary school teachers because I could not supply the actual one when I was asked. An intelligent child as I was throughout my schooling, I had this ‘scar’ to live with, which was not all that important to me anyway. So I had to be ‘officially’ younger by at least more than a year, so that when I turned forty, I still had to be said to be thirty-eight years old. Well, being small-bodied as I have always been, that never posed a problem or suspicions of any kind. I loved myself, I loved people, and I loved and cherished the life that I was afforded to live. Think about this: I was named Onus at birth—which means responsibility or duty or burden of proof; and somehow my very elementary school teachers decided that they were going to misspell my name and write ‘Honours’. Then, at a later stage I named myself Vutlhari—which is a Tsonga name for ‘Wisdom’. I liked the name because it much reflected who I observed myself to be.

I was born in a relatively poor family. So it turned out that we were poor. But there is something about us humans that makes us get used to, or adapt to, our conditions, until we finally consider it normal to live in those conditions. However, we never went to bed hungry. If we had to eat dried vegetables, or Mopani worms, or whatever we could be afforded, so it was. By the time my eldest brother was born to my father, my mother already had two daughters from a previous relationship that I am not sure if it was a marriage or not. But I know that my sisters’ father had passed on.

So, as beautiful as my mother was, I guess my father just could not resist her, though he was already married and had about five children at that time. Consequently she bore him three more children, of which I was the very last. He had no other children after me. My father was brainy, and so was my mother. Perhaps that was the reason that I, and my other two siblings, are also intelligent. However, since this work is about me, I will not divulge much regarding my siblings.

Yes, I was born in a poor family, but my mother did the best that she could to put me, along with my siblings, through school. Being a Black South African, if you know the history of this country at least in the nineteen-seventies, you can imagine the kind of education we were receiving. First, there were no crèches for us to attend then. So I had to start school at Grade One (then called Sub-standard A), at the age of five. I was obviously too young to go to school. So without any prior training to get used to the school routine, it was quite difficult for me to adjust and commit to it. As a result I flunked First Grade because I just would not go to school other days of the year. If I felt it was too cold or rainy, I would not go.

When I turned six I became more used to the routine and became serious. Though we would learn the vowels from the alphabet, how to count from one to ten, and put vernacular syllables together for a whole year, my performance was very good; in fact, outstanding. So I continued schooling in the primary school that was called Hlalelani (meaning ‘Spectate’). Whoever named that school, I have no idea what they had for breakfast that day to come up with such a name. All the same, I absorbed as much as I could in learning.

Back then, when spanking was the order of the day in our schools, I can count on both my hands and feet the number of times I was spanked. I was good at my work, because I always did my best. I was quiet and religious, having been brought up in a religious family where we went to church every Sunday. So from around Fourth Grade I had developed my learning to the point that I was unmatched. In fact, I named myself Vutlhari based on that observation. I had to choose which name suited me best between Musa (meaning ‘Grace’) and Vutlhari. So after long consideration I decided to go by the name Vutlhari.

Although all through my elementary and secondary schooling, even as far as undergraduate level I was called by my English name, I still loved the Tsonga name better. Also, some people would get stupid calling my name in a derogatory manner. Yet, I put up with it all these years. I only became surprised when I did my post-graduate degree—the Masters—that although I had