Could Marechera most likely been an early Aids victim in Zimbabwe?

In Prof Veit-Wild’s essay Me and Dambudzo she writes that they did it in motels, in a car and in her matrimonial home.  Prof Veit-Wild said Marechera’s medical records from 1986 suggested that he could have been suffering from an Aids-related illness and she took care of his medical bills.
“Twenty-five years later, I was looking through notes and papers of the time, when I found a receipt from Montague Clinic dated 25/2/1986 for testicular surgery. I looked after him when he was not well and paid the bills. Is it already HIV-related? In 1986, HIV was beginning to be part of public consciousness. Did they test him? If so, what was the result? Did anyone tell him he was HIV-positive?” she says.

Professor Veit-Wild realised that the only way to find out about her own status was to get tested. She did three weeks later and the results came out positive.
This means that Prof Veit-Wild has been living with HIV knowingly much longer than the likes of basketball hall of famer, Marvin “Magic” Johnson who discovered in 1991 that he was HIV positive. The year 1986 is around the time musician Freddie Mercury discovered that he was HIV positive.  He died in 1991.
Prof Veit-Wild could be one of the people to live with the virus that long — 26 years after she learnt of her HIV positive status, she is still alive. In her essay she wrote something that could suggest that she could have been infected by Dambudzo in one of their out-of-town shenanigans.

“Urged by his laments that we never have enough time together, I arrange for a three-day outing to Lake Mcllwaine.  It is January 1985. A horrendous disaster. I swear: Never, ever, again. Yet, two or three weeks later I crawl under his sheets again. How often? One, two or three times?
“Then, finally, I feel that I will be able to let go. In April I am ill with some kind of virus infection. Fever, a rash, swollen glands. Similar symptoms to Pfeiffer’s glandular fever, though not really identifiable. Two years later I would know,” she writes.

To some contemporaries that socialised with Marechera and Prof Veit-Wild the sexual relationship was unknown.
One of the people Professor Veit-Wild mentions in her essay is dub poet Albert Nyathi. She claims Nyathi and others such as Finance Minister Tendai Biti while at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) studying would come through to assist Marechera.

“They let him sleep on the floor in their dormitory rooms. They called him Buddy. Albert Nyathi, now a well-known imbongi, was among them, as was Tendai Biti,” she writes.
However, Prof Veit-Wild could have got her facts wrong on this issue. Nyathi was not at UZ up until 1988 when he enrolled for a Bachelor of Arts degree. Marechera died in 1987 so the two actually never met but Nyathi was inspired by Marechera’s works. Professor Wild worked with Nyathi after 1988 when they were part of a team of artistes that staged

plays and other projects to immortalise the late writer.

“Before 1988 the only interaction with Marechera was through his works. He inspired me to be an artiste. I never had an up-close and personal experience with him,” said Nyathi in an interview.

He added that he never suspected that Prof Veit-Wild had a sexual relationship with Marechera.
“She never at anytime told us that the two were lovers. It’s news to me,” he said.
Their affair seemed to have been a well-kept secret considering that she only confided with a close female German friend who was in a similar situation like her — married.
After having sexual intercourse with the writer she braved it up and housed him in her matrimonial home.
“After a few weeks, Dambudzo moves into our house. It feels too bad to leave him ‘stranded’ in the streets after we made love in the car (I had never done that before) or at a friend’s house. In the sordid city hotel, where we spend one night, all the black women stare at me. In the morning I find a window of my car smashed.  My husband agrees to let him stay for a while. He likes him and recognises his extraordinary literary style, a welcome exception to the rather boring middle-of-the road                     African writing. Like me and a few other friends, he                      hopes to stabilise him by getting him off the street,” she writes.

Prof Veit-Wild is expected in Zimbabwe this month and would conduct numerous workshops with Marechera as the focal point.