MOSCOW, June 24 (RIA Novosti) - The health of South Africa’s former President Nelson Mandela has recently deteriorated and the anti-apartheid leader is now in “critical” condition, the South African presidential administration said in a statement on Sunday.
The country’s President Jacob Zuma visited the 94-year-old Nobel Prize winner in a hospital in Pretoria, where he was taken on June 8 with a reported recurring lung infection. A team of doctors told him that the former president’s condition “had become critical over the past 24 hours.”
“The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well-looked after and is comfortable. He is in good hands,” Zuma said after his visit.
The news follows several optimistic statements made last week. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday that Mandela, who became South Africa's first black president in 1994, was getting better.
Mandela’s daughter Zenani Mandela-Dlamini told journalists last week that her father was "doing very well."
