JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) – Former President Nelson Mandela’s grief-laden disclosure that his son died of complications from AIDS won widespread praise Friday in a country where the pandemic kills more than 600 a day but is still shrouded in silence.

Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, once denied knowing anyone who had died of the disease.

The U.N. AIDS agency said Mandela’s announcement underscored that the pandemic knows no boundaries at its epicenter in sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the more than 39 million people worldwide infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“Increasingly all people in this region of the world are being affected by the pandemic,” UNAIDS said in a statement from Geneva.

Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon who was South Africa’s first black president, has become a leading international AIDS campaigner since retiring from political life in 1999. But he said he never suspected his own family would be afflicted by the disease.

Just hours after Makgatho Mandela died Thursday at age 54, Nelson Mandela went before the media to reveal that his son died of AIDS-related complications and appeal for more openness about the disease.

AIDS activists, opposition politicians, business leaders and others praised Mandela’s stand, which they said would help fight the stigma that prevents many of the estimated 1,500 South Africans infected every day from seeking help before it’s too late.

“We hope Mandela’s courageous announcement will encourage more people to be counseled, tested for HIV and treated where necessary,” said the Treatment Action Campaign, which has lobbied for access to life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs that have turned HIV into a chronic but manageable condition in wealthier countries.

The opposition Inkatha Freedom Party, whose leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi also went public when his son died of AIDS-related complications last year, called it a courageous move that would help break the silence about the pandemic.

The Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, a network of 170 international companies formed to fight the pandemic, said it hoped the move would encourage more governments and businesses to take action against the disease.

Mandela’s aggressive campaigning is in stark contrast to Mbeki’s government, which has been criticized for its sluggish response to the crisis and for courting dissident theorists who question that HIV causes AIDS.

More than 5 million of South Africa’s 45 million people are infected with HIV, more than in any other country.

But until this year, the government refused to provide anti-retrovirals through the public health system, citing concerns about their safety and cost.

It has now promised to provide free treatment to all who need it within five years.

Mbeki was among the many visitors at Mandela’s residence Thursday who came to extend condolences, but his spokesman Bheki Khumalo declined to comment on Mandela’s disclosure about what killed his son.

While opposition parties issued statements backing Mandela’s stand against the stigmatization of AIDS victims and their families, the governing African National Congress made no mention of the disease when it extended its sympathy to Mandela’s family.

ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said the party took Mandela’s statement seriously and hoped it would lend impetus to the government’s existing programs. But he said he also hoped it would not be used for political gain.

“If the ANC used its moral stature in our communities, it could change perceptions fundamentally around the disease to affect both prevention and treatment,” said Zackie Achmat, the leader of the TAC activist group who himself is infected with HIV. “But it misses every opportunity.”

Makgatho, an attorney, was one of four children from Nelson Mandela’s first marriage to Evelyn Mase, who died last year at 82. Of the other three children, a daughter died in 1948 before she was a year old, and another son was killed in a car crash in 1969, while Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years under apartheid.

Last year, Makgatho Mandela’s wife, Zondi, died of pneumonia. The couple had three sons.