Post date: Jun 30, 2013 12:22:42 PM
South Africans hope and pray for Mandela's recovery on another Sunday with their former president in hospital
SOWETO, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (JUNE 30, 2013) (REUTERS) - The congregation at Nelson Mandela's old township prayed for his health on Sunday (June 30) after the former South African president's health was said to be improving in hospital.
Nelson Mandela's condition remains "critical but stable" but the government hopes the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero will be out of hospital soon, President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday (June 28).Mandela has been at the Mediclinic Heart Hospital for over three weeks for treatment for a recurring lung infection.
On Saturday, U.S. President Barack Obama, who is on his first official visit to the country, met the family of South Africa's ailing anti-apartheid hero and offered words of comfort and praising the critically ill retired statesman as one of history's greatest figures.
The faltering health of Mandela, 94, a figure admired globally as a symbol of struggle against injustice and racism, is dominating Obama's two-day visit to South Africa.
Obama said afterwards in a statement he had also spoken by telephone with Mandela's wife Graca Machel, who remained by her husband's side in the hospital in Pretoria.
Machel said she had conveyed this message to her husband and thanked the Obamas for their "touch of personal warmth".
Obama's visit to South Africa had stirred intense speculation that the first African-American president of the United States would look in on the first black president ofSouth Africa in his hospital room.
But Mandela's deterioration in the last week to a critical condition forced the White House to decide against such a visit.
Later on Sunday, Obama flies to Cape Town, from where he will visit Robben Island, the windswept former penal colony in the frigid waters of the south Atlantic where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in apartheid jails.