Mandela Said to Be ‘Steadily Improving’ on 95th Birthday

JOHANNESBURG - Two by two, the children in the hall of the primary school Piet van Vuuren entered in the working class district of Brixton, white, black and brown is a tribute to the man who had come to praise.



 



"Happy Birthday Tata Madiba", the hundreds of cacophonous voices rang in unison with the clan name of Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa sick. "We love you, we do!"
Before 1994, when Mr. Mandela was elected as President, this school was reserved for white children under harsh system of racial segregation known as apartheid. Now the school is the image of the rainbow nation that Mr Mandela worked to create.
"If not for Tata Madiba, I would not be in this school right now," said Luzuho Mdizu, 12, a seventh-grader, who is the best male student of the school. "He's my hero."
Across the country on Thursday, South Africans spent 67 minutes on the 95th Birthday of Mandela help others as a tribute to Mr. Mandela's 67 years of public service.
After weeks of fighting against a critical illness, Mr. Mandela remained in hospital on Thursday, but officials said his condition was "improving steadily."
The optimism contrasts with the widespread concern among South Africans and the world that Mr. Mandela could not of pneumonia that hospitalized him on 8 June forced the fourth time in a year to win. Previously, authorities had described his condition critical but stable.
In a statement Thursday, President Jacob Zuma wished Mr. Mandela on his birthday and said: ". Madiba remains in hospital in Pretoria, but the doctors have confirmed that their health is constantly improving"
In an interview with the British Sky News, a daughter of Mr. Mandela said Mandela Motlhajwa Zindzi Wednesday that Mr. Mandela was television and wearing headphones to hear the sound.
"You can see it's there in his eyes, the same energy and power," he said. The family was presented to Mr. Mandela with a collage of family photos as a birthday gift, he said.
Little is known about the details of his illness. A court ruling in June in a lawsuit filed on within the family of Mr. Mandela, where he might be buried said he was in a permanent vegetative state, but team members, family and doctors both have since rejected this. Family and friends who have visited recently say that Mr. Mandela is sometimes awake, smiling, eye communication, and even tried to talk.
On Thursday, hundreds of people outside the hospital in Pretoria, where Mr. Mandela in the past 40 days has triggered gathered. ANC officials brought a birthday cake, while good people to add more posters and mountain flower tributes outside the hospital, hooting and crashing on freedom songs of the struggle against apartheid.
Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize, the symbol of the struggle against apartheid, spent the morning painting the walls of a school in a poor neighborhood.
A community group in Mpumalanga spent the day building a library for a school in the impoverished city Nhlazatshe, the installation of five teams and shelves full of books.
South Africans of all races join hands in creating human chains across the country, a symbol of Mr Mandela permanent vision of a country where all people, regardless of race, were equal citizens.
Piet van Vuuren In primary school in Brixton, children marched armed with black garbage bags to clean garbage from the surrounding streets. Other students donated blankets for people living in huts in Joe Slovo Informal Settlement in the area.
None of the students of the school also born in the time when Mr. Mandela resigned as president in 1999, and some were born after Mr Mandela retired from public life in 2004. However, his name, his image and his message still resonate, Ashleigh Marie Hedin said, 12, a seventh-grader.
"Madiba is always with us," he said. "He gave us our freedom."
Motlhajwa Mrs. Mandela, daughter of Mr. Mandela and his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, his birthday as "a gift to the nation."
"There are some naysayers who come to the country to a standstill and say" if I die, he told a local radio station. But, he said, "the country will continue as it always has been. Nevertheless, the country has solidified to meet and perform"