Madiba doctors refuse to pull the plug

05/06/2013 Fire fighters from Working on fire demontrated their drilling skills and brought flowers and messages of support for the ailing Nelson Mandela outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria. Picture: Phill Magakoe

05/06/2013 Fire fighters from Working on fire demontrated their drilling skills and brought flowers and messages of support for the ailing Nelson Mandela outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria. Picture: Phill Magakoe

Published Jul 6, 2013

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Pretoria - Nelson Mandela’s doctors have rejected the idea of turning off his life support, unless he suffers massive organ failure, a close family friend has said.

“I was told the matter had been raised and the doctors said they would only consider such a situation if there was a genuine state of organ failure,” said Denis Goldberg, a long-time friend of Mandela and a fellow Rivonia trialist.

Members of the Mandela family who went to court to secure the exhumation and reburial of the remains of three of Nelson Mandela’s children exaggerated the severity of his health in papers, leading to reports that he was in a “permanent vegetative state”.

“Obviously Mandela is in a critical state, but his condition was definitely exaggerated,” a highly-placed source told Weekend Argus, sister title of Pretoria News Weekend last night.

The latest shock revelation, apparently seen as a way to speed up court proceedings against embattled Mandela grandson Mandla, who is said to have moved the bodies in question in the middle of the night in 2011, comes amid rising anger and concern over the schism in the Mandela family.

The admission that Mandela’s precarious health was exaggerated for purposes of the court action comes as the Presidency urged the Mandela family to resolve their increasingly bitter dispute “amicably”.

“It is regrettable that there is a dispute going on among family members and we’d like that dispute to be resolved as amicably and as soon as possible,” said President Jacob Zuma’s spokesman Mac Maharaj.

Maharaj refused to comment on the nine-day-old court document which said the 94-year-old former statesman was judged to be in a “permanent vegetative state”, and that his doctors had recommended switching off his life-support machines.

“We did not file any document and we are not saying that it’s true or not true,” he said.

Maharaj would say only that Madiba remained in a “critical but stable” condition.

 

Yesterday he said:

“The doctors deny that the former president is in a vegetative state,” Maharaj added.

Further information in the court papers was that doctors had advised the family to turn off Mandela’s life support.

Mandela’s wife Graça Machel said on Thursday he was fine.

Goldberg said yesterday that Mandela was “totally conscious” when he visited him in hospital on Monday. “I was invited by… Graça Machel to visit him in (the Mediclinic Heart) hospital in order to provide the stimulation of hearing the voice of a person he knows.

“He was incapacitated but he was totally conscious.”

Goldberg confirmed that Mandela was receiving assistance to breathe. “But he responds to voices and tries to talk, yet mumbles. He was dozing when I got there. I spoke and told him who I was and he opened his eyes and looked at me. I spoke to him for about 10 minutes and he responded positively to what I was saying.

“He did not answer because he can’t talk, with the pipe in his throat, but he was moving his jaw as if he wanted to talk. I was absolutely amazed - after the stories I had heard,” Goldberg was quoted as saying.

Mandela’s eldest daughter Makaziwe, who is heading the family group opposing Mandla, visited Madiba in hospital yesterday.

Granddaughters Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway and Swati Dlamini also arrived to visit the former president. They left shortly after 11am.

Meanwhile, it also emerged yesterday that if an unknown person had not spilled the beans about Mandla moving the remains in question “in the dead of night”, Makaziwe and the rest of the family would never have known.

Court papers said it was “only when the Mandela family decided to dig up the so-called “graves at their plot in Qunu”, and found them empty, “that the First Respondent (Mandla) admitted that he had secretly removed the remains to Mvezo”.

“I hasten to add at this point that permission to dig up and remove human remains was neither sought from the remainder of the Mandela family, nor from the Provincial and Local Authorities,” the papers say.

David Smith, advocate for the family, says in his certificate of urgency to the Mthatha High Court that the three were originally buried in a public cemetery near Mthatha.

In 2010 the family received permission and made arrangements for the re-internment of the remains at their plot in Qunu.

 

The remains were exhumed on Tuesday and reburied in Qunu on Thursday.

On Thursday Mandla launched a scathing attack on his relatives in a press conference, accusing them of adultery and of milking his grandfather’s fame.

During the news conference, broadcast live, Mandla confirmed rumours that his young son Zanethemba was in fact the child of an illicit liaison between his brother Mbuso and Mandla’s now former wife Anais Grimaud.

However, Mbuso said in a telephone interview yesterday he was not the boy’s father.

Mbuso also told Independent Newspapers he had not been in contact with Grimaud or the child since the paternity scandal broke in July last year.

“Anything I say will be twisted. But he (Mandla) also says my father is not my father. And how true can those words be? It can’t be true. If you look at 70 percent of the statements he (Mandla) makes, they are based on fallacies,” Mbuso said.

Late yesterday, Sapa quoted Mthatha police as saying that investigators had collected “most of the evidence” in a grave-tampering case involving Mandla, and would give the docket to a senior prosecutor. “Investigators have gathered most of the evidence,” police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Mzukisi Fatyela said.

“They will hand over the docket to the senior prosecutor on Tuesday next week,” he said.

Meanwhile,

it was quiet on Friday outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital.

Journalists milled around one of the two entrances, waiting for visitors to arrive.

People came throughout the day to bring more flowers and cards, as well as to take photographs in front of the wall.

Different religious groups sang and prayed at the hospital entrance in various languages. - Pretoria News

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