Mandela sparkle is fading, says wife
Nelson Mandela’s wife has described how the former president’s “sparkle” is gradually fading, as South African officials disclosed that he is suffering from a recurring lung infection.
The authorities added that Mandela, 94, was “responding to treatment” in a military hospital in Pretoria where he has spent three nights.
Graca Machel, whom Mandela married on his 80th birthday in 1998, told of her pain at having to watch her husband “aging” before her eyes. “I mean, this spirit and this sparkle, you see that somehow it’s fading,” she said on Monday.
“To see him aging, it’s something also which pains you,” she said. “You understand and you know it has to happen.”
Graca Machel, the widow of a former president of Mozambique, is Mandela’s third wife. He divorced his second wife, Winnie, in 1992, while his first wife, Evelyn, died in 2004.
Ndileka Mandela, a granddaughter, said that Mandela seemed to have accepted his condition. “I think he takes it in his stride, he has come to accept that it’s part of growing old, and it’s part of humanity as such,” she said.
“At some point you will be dependent on someone else — he has come to embrace it.”
Security is tight at 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria where the government says that Mandela is “comfortable” and not in any immediate danger. But officials have declined to say when he might be released. His condition was considered sufficiently serious to justify flying him about 960 kilometres from his home village to the capital on Saturday.