Published: 2013 July 15 10:44:49 (4718 Views)

Nelson Mandela will soon be discharged from hospital to recuperate at home, according to former South African president Thabo Mbeki.

'I am quite certain that one of these days Madiba (Mandela) will go back home,' he said at the weekend.

Official statements that South Africa's first  black president was critical but stable were correct, he said, at a memorial service in Pretoria on Saturday.

He added: 'One of these days the doctors will agree that he can go and stay at home rather than in hospital.'

Mandela's wife Graça Machel also said she was 'less anxious' about his condition.

'He continues to respond positively to treatment. I would say that today I am less anxious than I was a week ago,' she said.

The former apartheid campaigner has been hospitalised for more than five weeks for a recurring lung infection, which has led to four hospital stays in the last six months.

Friends who have visited him say he is on a life support machine - and court papers alleged he was in a persistent vegetative state - but recent official updates have said Mandela was in a critical but stable condition.

Last week, a close friend of Mandela contradicted the court reports that he was 'totally conscious' when he visited him in hospital this week.

Denis Goldberg, a white anti-apartheid activist and stalwart of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), contradicted that medical opinion presented in court, which stated that Mandela has been in a 'vegetative state' for the last nine days and his family had discussed switching off his life support machine.

Goldberg, who was jailed for 22 years during the infamous Rivonia trial of 1964 that saw Mandela imprisoned for life, insisted that he had visited Mandela on Monday and he that 'he is clearly a very ill man, but he responds to voices and tries to talk.'

He added: 'He was dozing when I got there. I spoke and told him who I was and he opened his eyes and looked at me. I spoke to him for about ten minutes and he responded positively to what I was saying. He was aware of who I was.'

- DM

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