JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – Nelson Mandela’s
doctors have rejected the idea of turning off
the ailing icon’s life support unless he suffers
massive organ failure, a close family friend
told AFP.
Denis Goldberg — an anti-apartheid activist
who has been Mandela’s friend for more than
half a century — on Friday said the issue of
turning off life support was discussed and
ultimately dismissed. “I was told the matter had been raised and the doctors said they would only consider such a situation if there was a genuine state of organ failure,” Goldberg said.
“Since that hasn’t occurred they were quite
prepared to go on stabilising him until he
recovers.”
The 80-year-old Goldberg was convicted along
with Mandela in 1964 for their fight against
white-minority rule.
He visited the former president in hospital on
Monday.
A court document filed by a lawyer for
Mandela’s family nine days ago stated the 94-
year-old was “assisted in breathing by a life
support machine.”
“The Mandela family have been advised by the
medical practitioners that his life support
machine should be switched off,” the court
filing read.
“Rather than prolonging his suffering, the
Mandela family is exploring this option as a
very real probability.”
The document – which was designed to press a
court to urgently settle a family row over the
remains of Mandela’s children — also stated
that Mandela was “in a permanent vegetative
state.”
South Africa’s presidency has stated that is
not the case, but has refused to give further
details of his condition, citing the need to
respect Mandela’s privacy.
On the day the document was drafted,
President Jacob Zuma abruptly cancelled a
trip to Mozambique to confer with Mandela’s
doctors amid fears the 94-year-old may be
close to the end.
Zuma, Mandela family members and his close
friends have since reported his condition has
improved.
South African presidential spokesman Mac
Maharaj told AFP on Friday that Zuma’s
office “had not been party” to the court
material and would not speculate on its
content.
“We did not file any document and we are not
saying that it’s true or not true,” he said.
Earlier Goldberg said Mandela was “clearly a
very ill man, but he was conscious and he tried
to move his mouth and eyes when I talked to
him.”
“He is definitely not unconscious,” he added,
saying “he was aware of who I was”.
Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for
fighting white-minority rule and went on to
lead the process of racial reconciliation as
South Africa’s first black president, has now
spent a month in hospital after being admitted
with a recurrent lung infection.
South Africa’s parliament on Friday hosted a
prayer service in a Cape Town cathedral where
Mandela was hailed as “an icon of a truly free
South Africa”.
“It is a reflective period for our people,” said
national assembly deputy speaker NomaIndiya
Mfeketo.
“The thought of Madiba in hospital indisposed
due to illness is harrowing. This is not what we
wish for our beloved hero.”
The ruling African National Congress (ANC)
dedicated its annual Gauteng provincial
general council meeting in Pretoria to Mandela.
“We want to acknowledge him as a comrade
who not only stood for
the ANC as a servant of the people of South
Africa; he also stood
for values of human rights and justice
universally,” said ANC Gauteng deputy
chairwoman Gwen Ramokgopa.
The delegates, dressed in white T-shirts
bearing Mandela’s image
and the words “Long live Nelson Mandela”,
sang struggle songs dedicated to the anti-
apartheid icon, the South African Press
Association reported.
Meanwhile leading South Africans urged
Mandela’s family to end an increasingly
acerbic family feud over the gravesites of
three of Mandela’s children.
On Thursday Mandela’s grandson Mandla
launched a tirade at close family members who
took him to court to force him to reinter
Mandela’s children at the revered former
South African leader’s proposed burial ground
in Qunu, his childhood village.
Mandla accused one of his brothers of
impregnating his wife and said others were
born out of wedlock.
The three bodies were reburied Thursday in
Qunu, but the fall-out from the dispute
continued to reverberate.
South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond
Tutu pleaded with Mandela’s family not to
“besmirch” the former president’s name.
“Please, please, please may we think not only of
ourselves. It’s like spitting in Madiba’s face,”
said Tutu in a statement, using Mandela’s clan
name.
Presidential spokesman Maharaj also urged
the family to solve the increasingly bitter
dispute “amicably”.
“It is regrettable that there is a dispute going
on amongst family members and we’d like that
dispute to be resolved as amicably and as soon
as possible,” he said.
Mandela was rushed to hospital on June 8 with
a recurring respiratory infection.