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Nelson Mandela's friends lament his decline

Published:Friday | July 12, 2013 | 12:00 AM
A South African woman writes a get-well message yesterday on a banner showing former South African President Nelson Mandela, placed at the entrance to the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where Mandela is being treated in Pretoria, South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG (AP):

Ahmed Kathrada, a warhorse of the anti-apartheid struggle, was allowed just a few minutes at the hospital bedside of his critically ill comrade, Nelson Mandela.

It was, he said, a traumatic experience to see the former president, physically robust during their prison years together, in such a fragile state.

Mandela could not speak, but his face "changed" and he recognised his visitor "through his eyes", Kathrada said of the July 1 encounter, which was overseen protectively by Mandela's wife, Graca Machel.

"All the years that we knew him, we knew him, somebody who was very conscious of his health, somebody who exercised in and outside of jail, regularly, and here you see a person who's different. A shell of himself," Kathrada, 83, said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.