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Johannesburg — President Jacob Zuma met with the doctors treating former president Nelson Mandela, the presidency said yesterday.
“President Jacob Zuma met with the medical team that is treating Mandela on Monday night, and they gave him a thorough briefing,” spokesperson Mac Maharaj said in a statement.
“President Zuma has full confidence in the medical team, and is satisfied that they are doing their best to make Madiba better.”
Mandela was still in a “serious but stable” condition in a Pretoria hospital.
Maharaj dismissed media reports that Zuma visited Mandela yesterday. “That is incorrect. The president is in Cape Town preparing for the budget vote of the presidency,” he said.
On Saturday, the presidency announced that Mandela had been admitted to hospital in the early hours of the morning.
On Monday, the presidency said Mandela’s condition was “unchanged” from Saturday and that he was receiving intensive care.
This was the third time this year the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had been in hospital.
At the end of March and in April this year, he spent nine days in hospital receiving treatment for recurring lung problems.
Earlier in March, he was admitted to a Pretoria hospital for a scheduled check-up and discharged the following day.
Meanwhile, a Sapa news report earlier yesterday that national police had confirmed Mandela was being treated at the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria has been dismissed as incorrect.
Brigadier Phuti Setati confirmed in an earlier interview that police stationed at the hospital were part of the presidential protection services team, whose task includes protecting former presidents, but did not specifically confirm that Mandela was in the hospital.
Setati took issue with Sapa for having taken the connection between the two as a confirmation, and reporting it as coming from the police. “That is incorrect. I did not say former President Mandela is in the hospital… for that information you must approach the presidency; not the police,” he said.
Setati said the report had embarrassed and compromised the police.
Sapa editor Mark van der Velden confirmed the error had come about in the editing of the original news report and that this was regretted.
“It seemed a logical connection of facts and it’s a pity that this has happened in the continuing official vacuum of information confirming whether or not Mandela is in this hospital, but we are happy to set the record straight.”
Meanwhile, the leader of a controversial nationalist party in Britain caused a stir on Monday with a series of tweets in which he called Mandela a terrorist whose “ANC regime has incited ethnic cleansing murders of thousands of Boer farmers”.
The leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, said on Twitter on Sunday: “Saint Nelson Mandela on last legs it seems. Make sure to avoid BBC when the murdering old terrorist croaks. It’ll be nauseating.”
In later tweets, Griffin said Mandela was the “saint of a godless religion” and that “before Mandela, South Africa was [a] safe economic powerhouse. Now [a] crime ridden basket case”.
A BNP spokesperson confirmed to The Guardian that Griffin posted the tweets. Many on Twitter responded to Griffin, some agreeing with him but most questioning the British politician’s history of South Africa. “Cannot get over the comments about Mandela from @nickgriffinmep. Genuinely angry and ashamed to be British right now,” said one user.
Another said Griffin will “never ever achieve what Nelson Mandela has even if you live for 1 000 years”.
Mandela was hospitalised on Saturday over a recurring lung infection. The presidency confirmed on Monday morning that the former president was stable but in a serious condition. — News24
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