The South African government has issued a press statement Thursday dismissing reports of former president Nelson Mandela being in a permanent vegetative condition.
"We confirm our earlier statement released this afternoon after President Jacob Zuma visited Madiba in hospital that Madiba remains in a critical, but stable condition," said the government in the statement using Mandela's clan name.
"The doctors deny that the former president is in a vegetative state," added the statement.
Citing court documents, Agency France Press (AFP) had reported Thursday that the former president and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate was in a "permanent vegetative state." AFP also said that his doctors advised the family members of the ailing Nelson Mandela to turn off his life support machine.
The news agency obtained the documents from a court where the ailing former president's family members were fighting over where the final remains of Nelson's deceased children will be placed.
"He is in a permanent vegetative state and is assisted in breathing by a life support machine," the news agency quoted lawyers for the Mandela family as saying in the court filing.
"The Mandela family has been advised by the medical practitioners that his life support machine should be switched off. Rather than prolonging his suffering, the Mandela family is exploring this option as a very real probability," said the lawyers.
The former president was hospitalized in Pretoria earlier last month with lung infection. This is his third hospitalization in the last six months.
Nelson Mandela has a legacy of years of imprisonment during South Africa's fight against the apartheid regime and he is considered as the founding father of South Africa's modern democracy.
