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Andrew Harding, Africa correspondent

Andrew Harding Africa correspondent

This is the home of my reports, updates and analysis from across the world’s liveliest continent

11:05 UK time, Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Nelson Mandela's illness: Defending his dignity

Get-well card outside the house of former President Nelson Mandela (10 June 2013)

If you want to know about the health of South Africa's first black President Nelson Mandela there is really only one person to call - and it is not some junior spokesman in the presidential bureaucracy.

Instead, it is one of Mr Mandela's oldest, closest friends - a silver-haired, razor-sharp, 78-year-old South African called Mac Maharaj, who spent years imprisoned on Robben Island with Mr Mandela, and even transcribed and smuggled out a draft of his autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom.

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13:57 UK time, Tuesday, 11 June 2013

Andrew added analysis to:

Mandela remains 'serious but stable'

Behind the scenes, we're hearing more gloomy, confidential assessments. We've seen the first signs perhaps of the family of Nelson Mandela beginning to gather at his bedside.

We've also heard from some of his close friends, one saying that it was time for the public and the family to let him go.

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05:02 UK time, Monday, 10 June 2013

Andrew added analysis to:

Prayers as Mandela stays in hospital

"It's time to let him go" reads the main headline in South Africa's Sunday Times this morning. It quotes Nelson Mandela's friend and fellow struggle veteran Andrew Mlangeni, urging Mandela's family to "release him spiritually and put their faith in the hands of God". But in most other local papers, the frail Nelson Mandela's latest hospitalisation is treated - as one might, perhaps, expect after so many previous "scares" - with far less sense of drama.

The City Press leads on a new twist in the long-running scandal of President Zuma's lavish home refurbishments, while the tabloid Sunday World is more preoccupied with celebrity stories. The Sowetan Live website captures something of the increasingly phlegmatic public attitude towards Mr Mandela's fading health by quoting this Tweet - "Let him die with dignity. It's not a circus folks." While others urge the 94-year-old to fight on, a man in Mandela's home village, is quoted as saying "I think we should just accept it that Mandela is old and he will go soon."

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About Andrew

Africa correspondent since 2009, covering the continent's highs and lows - from the World Cup, Africa's economic boom, and the literary treasures of Timbuktu, to the pirates of Somalia, the conflict in Ivory Coast, and the struggles of Zimbabwe.

Twenty years as a foreign correspondent, based in the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia.

Reported on the 1993 parliamentary rebellion in Moscow, two Chechen wars, the Asian tsunami in 2004, and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Sudan, Liberia and beyond.

Born in the UK, grew up in Belgium and boarding school. Married with three children.

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