South Africa Prepares for Mandela's Passing

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A group of well wishers pray for Nelson Mandela outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria on Wednesday.

JOHANNESBURG—The life of Nelson Mandela appeared to hang in the balance Thursday morning, as family members visited the Pretoria hospital where he was undergoing treatment and neighbors from his rural ancestral town prepared for the passing of South Africa’s former president.
“His condition is critical,” said Mac Maharaj, President Jacob Zuma’s spokesman. Mr. Maharaj wouldn’t confirm news reports that Mr. Mandela is on life support, or say whether Mr. Zuma planned to visit him again Thursday.

Late Wednesday, Mr. Zuma canceled plans to attend an infrastructure-investment conference in neighboring Mozambique, after conferring with Mr. Mandela’s doctors at the Pretoria hospital where he was admitted June 8 to treat a lung infection.
Mr. Mandela, a revered champion of peace and racial equality who became South Africa’s first black, freely elected president in 1994, has been hospitalized four times since December and suffered a string of respiratory ailments stretching back to the tuberculosis he contracted during 27 years in prison for opposing South Africa’s former white-minority government.
Dozens of reporters and satellite trucks have converged outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria. They track every visit by family members and government officials—and capture the hopes and memories of well-wishers who have left a mounting pile of flowers, cards and balloons outside the hospital’s gates.
“People want to know how Mandela is doing,” said Virgil Hector, a 62-year-old high-school teacher from Cape Town who is vacationing in Pretoria this month and walked past the hospital for a look at the media scrum. “We hope for the best.”
Meanwhile, in Mr. Mandela’s hometown of Qunu, in the Eastern Cape province, Mr. Mandela’s neighbors said they are preparing for the inevitable.
“I’m very sad about him being in hospital,” says Kekana Mangqwambi, sitting outside his son’s round hut on Thursday morning, getting a pumice foot wash. “Nelson used to call me to his house and we would chat.”
Younger residents seized the chance to serve as impromptu tour guides for the dozens of visitors already streaming to the area. Truckers passing Qunu on their way between the larger towns of East London and Mthatha stopped to take photographs of Mr. Mandela’s salmon pink house. Sheep with the letter “M” dyed onto their wool grazed in front of his house.
Inside the vast compound, workers labored on a raised plot of land where residents said they believed Mr. Mandela would be buried.
Several family members traveled to Qunu on Tuesday for a meeting at Mr. Mandela’s home. Bantu Holomisa, a family friend, said the meeting was to brief village elders on Mr. Mandela’s health and to discuss news reports that the bodies of other Mandela family remains had been moved without consulting family elders.
South African officials have said Mr. Mandela’s precarious condition won’t upend the schedule of President Barack Obama’s visit to South Africa this weekend.
Mr. Obama is visiting the West African nation of Senegal on Thursday, and is scheduled to arrive in Johannesburg on Friday evening. On Saturday morning he will meet Mr. Zuma in Pretoria and address students in Soweto. On Sunday he is scheduled to visit Robben Island, where Mr. Mandela was imprisoned by the white-minority regime, and to speak at the University of Cape Town.
“Of course our thoughts and our prayers are with President Mandela at this time of great concern among all of us in South Africa,” Rob Davies, South Africa’s trade minister, said Wednesday. “At the same time, the visit of the United States president is also very significant and important.”
Write to Patrick McGroarty at patrick.mcgroarty@dowjones.com and Devon Maylie at devon.maylie@dowjones.com

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