Mandela at the threshold of death, praying for a peaceful end

 

Written by AFP. Posted in Africa

South Africans waited anxiously Wednesday morning news of Nelson Mandela, still between life and death, following a meeting of the family of the former president who prayed with the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town that he knows the end of a "perfect" and peaceful life.
 
"Thy blessing is based on Madiba now and jamais.Donne him, we pray, a quiet night and a good, a perfect ending," said the Reverend Thabo Makgoba, came to support the family in the event at the clinic Pretoria where Mandela was hospitalized for over two weeks.
The head of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa prayed with Graça Machel, Mandela's wife and several of his relatives, asking God to "give Madiba eternal healing and relief of pain and suffering" according to the text of his prayer sent to AFP.
Madiba is the clan name used affectionately in South Africa to refer to the former head of state, global icon of racial reconciliation.
Aged 94 years, Nelson Mandela for 48 hours in a state critique.Il was urgently admitted June 8 after a recovery of pulmonary infection that torments him for two and a half years.
Outside the hospital, in front of which one hundred doves were released in the day, the message of peace and tribute to the great man, and that the South African anthem was sung, many anonymous came improvise a vigil under the eye of a contingent increasingly supplied media.
Lerato Boulares, a businessman, hoped that "God merely borrow Mandela for some time," understood before making it to South Africans.
Akash Gangaram had the road from Johannesburg, convinced spend an evening "not only different but historical." "I'm here because Dad was Mandela.Avant apartheid, now is the démocratie.Aujourd 'Today I am free and no one can tell me to go home, "commented Tolly Mogane.
The day Tuesday was marked by the meeting organized by Mandela's eldest daughter, Makaziwe, and several grandchildren in Qunu, the village of his childhood.
They met in the house that Nelson Mandela had built in the fall of the racist apartheid regime in the village where he wants to be buried and offers a family of Mandela Square.
"This is a meeting of amadlomos," said a participant who requested anonymity, referring to a branch of the Thembu clan to which Mandela belongs.
No family member was willing to state the purpose of the meeting was "to discuss sensitive issues" according to the South African national agency Sapa.
Rumors spoke of dissension on the site chosen to host the grave of Nelson Mandela.
Some relatives argue for a burial in the village of Mvezo, where he was born, about forty miles by dirt road, where his little son Mandla maintains a memorial project to the claims in the light of pharaonic the modesty of this part of the countryside as idyllic as isolated.
Officially, the state of Nelson Mandela has not worsened since Sunday soir.Mais the defense minister in charge of the health of former presidents Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has come to stop by the hospital in the early evening, without reporting to its output.
On the night of Wednesday, the police presence near the house of Mandela in Johannesburg, has also increased, said the agency Sapa.Les parts of the house are closed and no light filter inside.
The South African Presidency merely for him to say that the health of the first black president of South Africa (1994-1999) was "unchanged", without further details or to medical care or the type of equipment used.
More oracular again, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has declared: "We must keep in our prayers but let the Almighty decide."
The flow of visitors is strictly limited to the family last week widened Tuesday, although it is unlikely that U.S. President Barack Obama, expected Friday evening for a three-day state visit, come see .
"President Obama would like to see President Mandela, but it is suffering," he soberly noted the Foreign Minister Maite Nkoane Mashebane.
Yet accustomed to its absence Mandela has not appeared in public since the World Cup in 2010 - the South Africans with difficulty considering its future disappearance.
And messages of support have continued to arrive from around the world, singer Rihanna Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison, of which eighteen Robben Island off Cape Town, where Mr. Obama has scheduled a visit tribute.
Released in 1990, Mandela received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with the last president of apartheid, FW de Klerk, for avoiding a civil war that many say inevitable in a country ravaged by brutality and injustice.
First black president of his country from 1994 to 1999, he retired from political life for almost ten years and is readily described by his countrymen as "the Father of the Nation" South Africa and abroad as an icon peace and forgiveness.