After being in serious and somewhat unstable condition over his three-month stay in the hospital, former South African President, Nelson Mandela, returned home on Sunday. Mandela, now 95-years-old, will receive in-home care, and in a statement on the doctors taking care of Mandela, current President Jacob Zuma’s office said: “he will receive the same level of intensive care at his Houghton home that he received in Pretoria. His home has been reconfigured to allow him to receive intensive care there.” The former president’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, said his grandfather’s homecoming was “a day of celebration,” and was “particularly heartening because it flies in the face of those who have been busy spreading lies that he was in a ‘vegetative state’ and just waiting for his support machines to be switched off.”
Mandela was admitted to the hospital on June 8, presumably for a chronic lung infection. Few reports on his condition are being released, but Mandela has been susceptible to respiratory issues since contracting tuberculosis during his 27-year imprisonment on an island off the coast of Cape Town. As such an influential figure, and the man responsible for leading the transition to democracy in South Africa, the entire population is concerned for Mandela’s health. However, Zuma’s office reports: “despite the difficulties imposed by his various illnesses, he, as always, displays immense grace and fortitude.”
