Ailing former South African President Nelson Mandela is not “doing well” but is continuing to put up a courageous fight from his “deathbed,” members of his family have told the South African Broadcasting Corporation in an interview.
“Every moment I get with him I’m amazed. There are times where I have to pinch myself that I come from this man who is a fighter even though you can see he is struggling, but fighting spirit is still there with him.”
Mr. Mandela spent almost three months in a Pretoria hospital after being admitted in June. The 95-year-old liberation struggle icon was discharged in September and has been receiving home-based medical attention since then. Since June, the Presidency has consistently described his condition as “critical but stable”.
“He is still with us although he is not doing well in bed,” his grandson, Ndaba Mandela, said.
Last month, Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying he was no longer talking “because of all the tubes that are in his mouth to clear (fluid from) the lungs.”
In February 2011, he was briefly hospitalised with a respiratory, infection before being re-hospitalised for a lung infection and gallstone removal in December 2012.
After a successful medical procedure in early March 2013, his lung infection recurred, and he was briefly hospitalised in Pretoria. On 8 June 2013, his lung infection worsened, and he was re-hospitalised.
