Nelson Mandela spends 1st night back at home
UPDATE: Former President Nelson Mandela has died at 95
JOHANNESBURG - Nelson Mandela spent the first night at his Johannesburg home since the former South African president
left a hospital after nearly three months of treatment for a recurring lung infection.There were no official updates Monday on the condition of the 95-year-old leader of the anti-apartheid movement, who was taken to his home in an ambulance on Sunday.
In announcing Mandela's discharge, the office of South African President Jacob Zuma said Mandela remained in critical and sometimes unstable condition.
A statement from Zuma's office on Sunday said Mandela would receive the same level of intensive care that he did in the hospital, administered by the same doctors.
"His home has been reconfigured to allow him to receive intensive care there," the statement said. "The health care personnel providing care at his home are the very same who provided care to him in hospital. If there are health conditions that warrant another admission to hospital in future, this will be done."
CBS News correspondent Debora Patta reported that, unlike a typical hospital discharge, Mandela's release doesn't offer much in the way of hope that the elder statesman is recovering.
According to CBS News' sources, Mandela is still unable to breathe on his own -- and witnesses saw as many as two dozen oxygen tanks being delivered to his house as evidence to that fact.
Wife Graca Machel has wanted to get Mandela home for some time, reported Patta, but doctors feared he might not survive the approximate 30 mile journey from Pretoria to Johannesburg.
He was moved in the early hours of Sunday morning after an earlier planned transfer was aborted due to his condition, Patta added.
Sources told her that the move should really be seen as one to allow him to spend his final days in the comfort of his own home, surrounded by family, rather than a sign that his condition could be improving.
There has been an outpouring of concern in South Africa and around the world for the transformative figure who led the tense shift from white rule to democracy two decades ago in a spirit of reconciliation.
Mandela
turned 95 on July 18. Zuma had urged South Africans to accept that Mandela had grown old and frail, saying all they could do was pray for him. Well-wishers delivered flowers and messages of support to the hospital where he was being treated, and prayer sessions were held around the country.The government has released few details about Mandela's condition, citing patient confidentiality. Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is feted around the world as a towering figure of reconciliation.
Despite being jailed for 27 years for his prominent role in opposing white racist rule, Mandela was seemingly free of rancor on his release in 1990, becoming the unifying leader who steered South Africa through a delicate transition to all-race elections that propelled him to the presidency four years later.