Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid revolutionary and former President of South Africa, is spending his sixth night in the hospital due to a recurring lung infection.
Mandela, 94, was hospitalized early last Saturday, in his fourth trip to the hospital since December.
Very little information has been released about his condition, which has been frequently described as “serious but stable.”
South Africans and other admirers all over the world are preparing for the worst while remaining hopeful.
People have left balloons and get-well messages outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria, where Mandela is staying, reports Independent Online.
President Jacob Zuma, who said that Mandela was in “serious but stable” condition when he entered the hospital last weekend, visited him on Thursday. “Madiba’s health continues to improve but his condition remains serious,” Zuma said afterwards in a statement.
Zuma encouraged people to keep him “in their prayers” and to wish him “a speedy recovery,” according to the BBC.
Mandela is greatly admired around the world for his activism and revolutionary role in ending apartheid.
In a deeply personal article for the South African Globe and Mail, Gerald Caplan perhaps says it best: “Maybe the truth is that, revere him as we do, we won’t really know how much we have lost until we have to face the world without him.”