South Africans prepared on Thursday to say farewell to ailing
anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela after his condition deteriorated
further in hospital, forcing President Jacob Zuma to cancel a trip to
neighbouring Mozambique. Zuma was due to attend a summit in
Maputo of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to discuss
regional infrastructure, but pulled out after visiting the 94-year-old
former president in hospital late on Wednesday.
"Over
the past 48 hours, the condition of former president Madiba has gone
down," presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told state broadcaster SABC,
using the clan name by which Mandela is affectionately known.
Maharaj
said Mandela's condition remained critical. He declined to comment on
media reports that he was
on life support in the Pretoria hospital where
he is being treated for a lung infection, saying his privacy should be
respected.
Mandela has already spent 20 days in the hospital, his fourth hospitalization in six months.
This
has forced a growing realisation among South Africans that the man
regarded as the father of their post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation" will not
be among them for ever.
"Mandela is very old and at that age,
life is not good. I just pray that God takes him this time. He must go.
He must rest," said Ida Mashego, a 60-year-old office cleaner in
Johannesburg's Sandton financial district.
Mandela, South
Africa's first black president, is admired around the world as a symbol
of resistance to injustice for the way he opposed his country's
apartheid system, spending 27 years in jail, more than half of them on
notorious Robben Island.
He is also respected for the way he
preached reconciliation after the 1994 transition to multi-racial
democracy following three centuries of white domination.
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