JOHANNESBURGJOHANNESBURG — Two former South African presidents bound together in the country’s struggle to exit apartheid are both suffering ill health.
Nelson Mandela on Tuesday spent his 25th day in the hospital, while officials announced that that F.W. de Klerk will be fitted with a pacemaker. De Klerk is the last leader of South Africa’s apartheid era. He and Mandela shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
Mandela, 94, was taken to a Pretoria hospital on June 8 for a recurring lung infection. Since then, there has been a groundswell of concern in South Africa and around the world for the man who spent 27 years as a prisoner under apartheid and then emerged to negotiate an end to white racist rule before becoming president.
As president, de Klerk freed Mandela from prison.
