Warrior Princess Is Still Fighting for Life in Africa and Beyond with Courage, Strength, and Hope

Princess Kasune Zulu, who was born in Kabwe, Zambia, is one of 33 million people living with HIV in our world today. The virus has claimed the lives of her mother and father, baby sister and brother. It has also taken the lives of 25 million around the world and orphaned 15 million children.

It would be easy for her to say, in the midst of this suffering, that the HIV virus owns her and has destroyed her life, but she says, "It is only a visiting stranger in my body. How I choose to respond is up to me and choose to respond by using my voice to fight for those whose voice cannot be heard."

Now this charming and vivacious young woman has chronicled her incredible in a book called, "Warrior Princess, fighting for life with courage and hope' along with Belinda Collins and published by Intervarsity Press.

During a visit to Southern California recently, I was jointed by my wife Norma, as we sat down with Princess Zulu to find out more about her life and ministry.

I began by asking her if she was a "real princess" or if this was the name given to her at birth.

She smiled and replied, "As per Zambian tradition, my parents named me while burying my umbilical cord underneath a tree a week after I was born. Here my dad announced, 'Her name is Princess. She will be a princess among princesses. She will meet with all the leaders of the world.'

"It's amazing that when I was just one week old my dad had such insight into my future. He felt free to chose the name Princess as he has royal lineage to two of Zambia's chiefs, the traditional leaders of my country, so the name Princess does have a royal connection."

She added, "However, I'm a child of God even more than being a princess."

Princess Zulu said that her family was "well-to-do" by Zambian standards, however things began to change for the family was when the deadly HIV virus hit the family unit.

"We began to see changes in my father, but thee first one to die from the mysterious disease was my baby sister Linda, who didn't make it up to two years of age" she recalled. "Then my father, who had worked from a very humble beginning as a gardener with one of the colonial masters of our time and when Zambia got its independence from Britain in 1964, the man left him with his company and my father ended up rising to a position of a commanding officer there. 

"So that's the time when things were beginning to change. My father was no longer the same energetic man who could make very good decisions and the company let him go. We ended up moving to the village and there I began to live life like any other village child; not having running water in our house became a reality and then I would have to walk several miles to school. Still, we were still a little bit fortunate as we still had shoes while most of our friends didn't have them."

Around this time, little was known about HIV and AIDS, and Princess Zulu said that many in her country could not understand why so many people were getting so sick.

"Because Africa is a very spiritual continent some people thought well maybe this illness was demonic or it was witchcraft," she said. "Those were the myths around that time. Then my mom did something very unique one night. She called me and said, 'Princess, I want to speak to you because I have looked within the family and I realize that you are the one who's going to take care of this family.' You could sense really her brokenness and that she was withholding tears and she went on to say, 'I am so sorry, but I'm going to leave you with almost nothing, but I know you'll be strong.' She then encouraged me to be 'strong' and 'be of good courage.'

"I then went to school, but was called home and when I got there I found my mother was almost dying and I don't think both of my parents knew, at the time, what was 'taking them' and that was the challenge at that time."

She said that it was most likely that her father was the first to contract the HIV virus and then he passed it onto to her mother.

"Most people don't even know who gave it to them in the first place," she said. "They didn't even know what disease they were dying from or anything. If my parents ever knew, they never told us.

"But that is not the end of the story. When they both died, then I became the one to take care of my brothers and sisters. We were nine of us altogether so that made me the head of a child-headed household. I was seventeen years old when I became the one to take care of my whole family. It was a challenge because we didn't know where our next meal would come from or if we would be able to continue going to school."

Then Princess Zulu delivered quite a shock. She got married at the age of eighteen and at the same time discovered that she was HIV-positive.

She recalled that it was in December 1997 when she was tested for HIV and was told by a medic that she was HIV-positive and was given just six months to live.

"When, after being given permission by my husband, I was tested, a nurse said to me, 'Why do you want to know? First of all, it's an incurable disease. People who have access to these antiretroviral drugs in wealthy countries like America can be treated to an extent, what is the point of you knowing in Zambia where we don't have these drugs?'

"I remember in the month of December thinking that if there is nothing the medical doctors can do for me, 'I can take it to the Lord in prayer.' And right there and then, a bright ray of light opened the room and sent this bright light into my heart and immediately an almost an audible voice told me, 'Say, praise God.' I was scared to do so feeling that maybe the doctor would think that I was also mentally challenged as well as HIV-positive if I said that.

"I have regretted not having said it because I have come to learn that that the God we serve is more than able to give you joy even in things that passes man's understanding, which is scriptural, but I have come to live it and it's been a humbling, humbling experience."

I then asked what happened to her husband. 

"He, too, was found to be HIV-positive and I go more into details in the book about this. For him, it was a different experience. He really felt kind of sorrowful. I was his fourth wife so he had had a lot of wives and a few other had died.

"I just chose to forgive him. I could have chosen the other route and said, 'Look what you did to me." I think for me, being a young Christian then -- I had given my life to the Lord in 1995 -- and had somewhere heard about the power of forgiving and how that releases your own healing or your own peace, and I think that really helped me.

"So when we found out that we were both HIV-positive, I think humanly speaking I could have wanted to blame him and said, 'I was young you and you took advantage of me,' but I thought that I have HIV already so why not praise God in the midst of this affliction.

"We were together for some time and it was difficult for him. He lost his job when people suspected that he had HIV and I wasn't helping the situation by being so busy telling everyone about HIV, even at the expense of him saying, 'I will divorce you if you continue to do this.' But for me, I thought that this was my assignment and I was told I would only live for six months. So I was operating on an emergency mode.

"It was an issue of urgency. I wanted to make every difference and encourage other women. I wanted to encourage someone who was dying of AIDS and tell them, 'You may die today, but there is hope in Christ.' I wanted to speak to the young girls in school to say 'abstain from sex because that way you prevent yourself from becoming infected with HIV.'"