South Africans prepared on Thursday to say farewell to ailing anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela after his condition deteriorated further in hospital, forcing President Jacob Zuma to cancel a trip to neighbouring Mozambique.
Zuma was due to attend a summit in Maputo of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to discuss regional infrastructure, but pulled out after visiting the 94-year-old former president in hospital late on Wednesday.
"Over the past 48 hours, the condition of former president Madiba has gone down," presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told state broadcaster SABC, using the clan name by which Mandela is affectionately known.
Maharaj said Mandela's condition remained critical. He declined to comment on media reports that he was on life support in the Pretoria hospital where he is being treated for a lung infection, saying his privacy should be respected.
Mandela has already spent 20 days in the hospital, his fourth hospitalization in six months.
This has forced a growing realisation among South Africans that the man regarded as the father of their post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation" will not be among them for ever.
"Mandela is very old and at that age, life is not good. I just pray that God takes him this time. He must go. He must rest," said Ida Mashego, a 60-year-old office cleaner in Johannesburg's Sandton financial district.
Mandela, South Africa's first black president, is admired around the world as a symbol of resistance to injustice for the way he opposed his country's apartheid system, spending 27 years in jail, more than half of them on notorious Robben Island.
He is also respected for the way he preached reconciliation after the 1994 transition to multi-racial democracy following three centuries of white domination.
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