NELSON Mandela’s condition is “very critical” and “anything is imminent”, his daughter Makaziwe Mandela has said.
“I can reiterate that Tata [father] is very critical, that anything is imminent, but I want to emphasise again that it is only God who knows when the time to go is,” she told broadcaster SAFM on Thursday. She said Mandela was responding to touch. “I won’t lie, it doesn’t look good.
But as I say, if we speak to him, he responds and tries to open his eyes. He’s still there. He might be waning off, but he’s still there,” she said. One granddaughter, Ndileka, described him as “stable” and thanked well-wishers from around the world for their support. Earlier during the day, the country’s presidency told Al Jazeera that the anti-apartheid icon’s health had deteriorated over the past 36 hours.
On Wednesday night, Jacob Zuma, the South African president, visited Mandela in hospital and reported that Mandela was still in “critical condition.” Zuma said he was cancelling a planned daytrip on Thursday to Mozambique, where he was to attend a regional summit. The president “was briefed by the doctors who are still doing everything they can to ensure his well-being,” a government spokesman said.
Mac Maharaj, the presidential spokesman, declined to comment on media reports that Mandela was on life support systems in the Pretoria hospital where he was taken on June 8. “I cannot comment on the clinical details of these reports because that would breach the confidentiality of the doctor/patient relationship,” Maharaj said in an interview with South Africa’s Radio 702.
Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste said that several thousand people had brought candles and prayed together for Mandela outside the hospital in Pretoria. Mandela, who became South Africa’s first black president after the end of apartheid in 1994, was admitted to hospital for what the government said was a recurring lung infection. This is his fourth admission to hospital since December last year.
United States President Barack Obama, who is currently on working visit to Africa, is scheduled to visit South Africa. But it is believed that Mr. Obama is currently reconsidering the visit in light of Mr. Mandela’s critical health situation. The American president may not want to encroach on a sensitive moment for South Africans as their beloved icon may be on his last days.
President Obama may also be wary of being accused of politicizing the moment if he insists on visiting. Instead of visiting South Africa at this point, Mr. Obama may be more inclined to visiting at a more auspicious time to pay his respects to a badly ailing Mr. Mandela.
A former bodyguard of Nelson Mandela is however criticizing the South African President of politicizing Mr. Mandela’s ailment, by keeping the nonagenarian statesman on life support when the latter may have reached his dying moment. He asked that Mr. Mandela be spared further troubles and be allowed to die with dignity if he’s ready to go.