But six years on from the death of her second child, Johanna is a happy mother of two healthy children and is now a health worker who spends her time educating others about the risks of HIV.
'I am very healthy now,' she explains, smilingly. 'I live a healthy lifestyle, look after myself and have been on anti-retrovirals for nearly a decade.
'My experiences are what makes me the person I am today. I have been through it all and have lived to tell the tale.' And Johanna really has been through it all. Healthy and well throughout her childhood and teens, her life was turned upside down when she was brutally attacked and raped aged 21.
Although she didn't know it, her attacker was HIV positive and it was to be another four years before Johanna realised that she too had the virus.
Growing up, she knew little about the disease beyond that it meant 'death and dying'. 'We knew that anyone who had AIDS was a walking grave,' she says.
'All the photos we saw on TV and in magazines were of bone thin people whom you could tell were on their deathbed. 'I didn't know anything except that it was a prostitute disease,' she continues. 'Any woman who was HIV-positive was regarded as promiscuous.
'Even our pastors called it a punishment from God for promiscuity.' Despite official denials, 1990s South Africa was at the centre of a growing AIDS epidemic - made worse by then president Thabo Mbeki's refusal to admit that it existed.
As a result, while new infections dropped in countries like Uganda, where the government swiftly moved to counter AIDS and educate those at risk, the number of South African infections multiplied rapidly. Read more
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