JOHANNESBURG: South Africans were torn yesterday between the desire not to lose a critically ill Nelson Mandela, who defined the aspirations of so many of his compatriots, and resignation that the beloved former prisoner and president is approaching the end of his life. The sense of anticipation and foreboding about 94-year-old Mandela’s fate has grown since late Sunday, when the South African government declared that the condition of the statesman, who was rushed to a hospital in Pretoria on June 8, had deteriorated.
A tide of emotional tributes has built on social media and in hand-written messages and flowers laid outside the hospital and Mandela’s home.Yesterday, about 20 children from a day care center posted a hand-made card outside the hospital and recited a poem.
“Hold on, old man,” was one of the lines in the Zulu poem, according to the South African Press Association.
In recent days, international leaders, celebrities, athletes and others have praised Mandela, not just as the man who steered South Africa through its tense transition from white racist rule to democracy two decades ago, but as a universal symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation.
In South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, where Mandela grew up, a traditional leader said the time was near for Mandela, who is also known by his clan name, Madiba.
For many South Africans, Mandela’s decline is a far more personal matter, echoing the protracted and emotionally draining process of losing one of their own elderly relatives. One nugget of wisdom about the arc of life and death came from Matthew Rusznyah, a 9-year-old boy who stopped outside Mandela’s home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton to show his appreciation.
“We came because we care about Mandela being sick, and we wish we could put a stop to it, like snap our fingers,” he said. “But we can’t. It’s how life works.”
His mother, Lee Rusznyah, said Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison under apartheid before becoming South Africa’s first black president in all-race elections in 1994, had made the world a better place.
“Let’s accept instead of crying,” said Lucas Aedwaba, a security officer in Pretoria who described Mandela as a hero. “Let’s celebrate that the old man lived and left his legacy.”
Dan Lehman, an American academic, chose a jogging route yesterday morning that passed by the hospital where Mandela is being treated.
“I was just going out for my morning run down here and come to pay my respects to the greatest man in the world,” Lehman said. Then he began to cry.
Emotion builds over Mandela
