Nelson Mandela's 'sparkle fading' as he fights lung infection

Nelson Mandela’s trademark “spirit and sparkle” is waning, his wife warned today.

Graca Machel told a South African television news channel it was painful to see her 94-year-old husband, who was taken to hospital on Saturday, “fading”.

She spokes as the office of South African President Jacob Zuma revealed Mr Mandela was being treated for a lung infection.

Ms Machel told eNews Central Africa: “This spirit and this sparkle, you see that somehow it’s fading. To see him ageing, it’s something also which pains you. You understand and you know it has to happen.”

Mr Mandela’s granddaughter Ndileka told the same news channel that the anti-apartheid icon had come to accept his condition.

She said: “He has come to accept that it’s part of growing old, and it’s part of humanity as such. At some point you will be dependent on someone else, he has come to embrace it.”

They are the first official comments from Mr Mandela’s family since the former president was taken to a military hospital in Pretoria on Saturday.

Since then his aides had issued only bland assurances, saying he was “comfortable” and there was “no immediate danger”. They had not divulged why Mr Mandela had to be flown more than 500 miles from his rural home for medical tests.

Today presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj said tests had revealed a “recurrence of a previous lung infection”. Mr Mandela was receiving “appropriate treatment” and res-ponding to it, Mr Maharaj added. In January last year he was in hospital for what officials initially described as “tests” but which turned out to be an acute respiratory infection.

Yesterday, after visiting the Nobel Peace Prize winner, defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told reporters he was “doing very, very well”. She added: “It is important to keep him in our prayers and also to be as calm as possible and not cause a state of panic because I think that is not what all of us need.”

Mr Mandela contracted tuberculosis during his years in jail, and had surgery for an enlarged prostate in 1985. In 2001, he had seven weeks of radiotherapy for prostate cancer, ultimately beating the disease.

In February he underwent a minor surgical procedure to determine the cause of abdominal pain.

The absence of hard information on Mr Mandela’s latest bout of ill health had prompted speculation. The South African Sunday Times quoted a source saying: “He has not been talking. He is not looking good.” The former lawyer, who spent 27 years in jail, was the country’s first black president from 1994 to 1999.