JOHANNESBURG — Former South African President Nelson Mandela is engaging with his family and seeing improvement from the recurring lung infection that forced him to spend a ninth day in the hospital Sunday, the president said.
President Jacob Zuma said Mandela remains in serious condition but that over the last two days his doctors have said that the improvements in his health have been sustained.
Zuma said Mandela "continues to engage with family," according to the prepared text of a speech released by the president's office. Family members are visiting Mandela daily.
The leader of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, Mandela spent 27 years in prison during white racist rule. He was freed in 1990 and became South Africa's first black president in 1994. His hospitalization in Pretoria, the capital, is Mandela's fourth admittance for treatment since December.
Zuma asked the audience at a Youth Day celebration to join him in wishing Mandela a happy Father's Day.
Youth Day commemorates June 16, 1976, when school children from the township of Soweto marched in protest of a government order that half of all classes in secondary school must be taught in Afrikaans, a derivative of Dutch spoken by the descendants of European settlers.
Police fired on the young marchers with live ammunition. Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old boy, was the first one killed. In all, hundreds of children — who fought the police with sticks and rocks — were wounded or killed in the violence.
Zuma said the youth of 1976 "took on the might of the apartheid state" and that Pieterson "became a symbol of the student uprising and quest for freedom and a better life."
