Nelson Mandela, still sick, leaves hospital

JOHANNESBURG – Nelson Mandela went home in an ambulance Sunday after nearly three months in a hospital that became the focus of a global outpouring of concern, but authorities said the health of the former South African president remained critical and sometimes unstable.

The return of the 95-year-old leader of the anti-apartheid movement to his home in an affluent neighborhood of Johannesburg allows his family to share time with him in a more intimate setting.

The office of South African President Jacob Zuma said Mandela will receive the same level of intensive care that he did in the hospital, administered by the same doctors.

Zuma’s office said the team of doctors treating Mandela, also known by his clan name Madiba, is “convinced that he will receive the same level of intensive care at his Houghton home that he received in Pretoria. His home has been reconfigured to allow him to receive intensive care there.”

The statement also said: “If there are health conditions that warrant another admission to hospital in future, this will be done.”

Mandela had been treated in a hospital in Pretoria, about 31 miles from Johannesburg, and the areas near the entrances to both the hospital and his home became makeshift shrines where people sang, prayed and left messages of support for a man who steered South Africa from white minority rule to democratic rule in a spirit of reconciliation that inspired the world.

Mandela was admitted to the hospital on June 8 for what the government described as a recurring lung infection. Legal papers filed by his family said he was on life support, and many South Africans feared the man widely viewed as the “father of the nation” was close to death.

One of Mandela’s daughters, Makaziwe Mandela, said as she left her father’s home that the family was “happy that he is home.”

Another Mandela family member, grandson Mandla Mandela, said the former president’s return home was a “day of celebration.”