TITLE: Anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela dies at 94
SOUTH AFRICA - Following weeks of speculation over his fate, former South African president Nelson Mandela has died aged 94 in a Pretoria hospital, according to latest reports.
On Thursday, an elder in the South African icon's clan said he was on life support and unable to breathe on his own, all but extinguishing hopes for the Anti-apartheid hero's recovery.
"Yes, he is using machines to breathe," Napilisi Mandela told AFP after visiting the much-loved 94-year-old's bedside. "It is bad, but what can we do," added the elder who usually presides over family rituals and meetings.
Most South Africans earlier in the week seemed prepared for the worst after the frail freedom fighter's condition in hospital deteriorated to critical.
Madiba, as he was affectionately known, was admired among most of South Africa's 53 million people as the architect of the 1994 transition to multi-racial democracy after three centuries of white domination.
His latest hospitalization before his death was his fourth in six months.
When Mandela lay on his hospital bed, South Africans, and the world at large, prayed for him. PHOTO/AFP
So as the world held its breath during this while, many bowed down to the realization that the father of the post-apartheid 'Rainbow Nation' would not be around forever.
On Monday, President Jacob Zuma told a news conference he and African National Congress (ANC) Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa had visited Mandela late on Sunday night, according to Reuters.
But he declined to give specific details about his medical condition other than to say he remained critical, reported the news agency.
"Given the hour, he was already asleep. We saw him, looked at him and then we had a bit of a discussion with the doctors and his wife," Reuters reported Zuma as saying.
"I don't think I'm a position to give further details. I'm not a doctor."
Battling a lung infection all this while, Mandela’s condition in hospital was reported “critical” just two weeks after it was “stable but serious”.
Since stepping down in 1999 after one term as president, Mandela stayed out of active politics in a country with Africa’s biggest and most important economy.
His last public appearance was waving to fans from the back of a golf cart before the final of the soccer World Cup in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium in July 2010.
During his retirement, the ex-president divided his time between his home in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, and Qunu, the village in the poor Eastern Cape province where he was born.
The public's last glimpse of him was a brief clip aired by state television in April this year during a visit to his home by President Zuma and other senior officials of the ruling African National Congress.
At the time, the 101-year-old liberation movement, which led the fight against white-minority rule, assured the public Mandela was "in good shape", although the footage showed a thin and frail old man sitting expressionless in an armchair.
PROFILE: Nelson ‘Madiba’ Mandela
The anti-apartheid hero was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe.
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