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would offer their thoughts and prayers at the family's difficult time.
• "Out of deference to Nelson Mandela's peace and comfort and the family's wishes, they will not be visiting the hospital," the statement said.
• Obama told reporters on the flight to South Africa Friday that he was grateful that he, his wife and daughters had a chance to meet Mandela previously. Obama hangs his photo of the introduction he had to Mandela in 2005 in his personal office at the White House -- their only meeting, when Obama was a senator.
• "I don't need a photo op," Obama said. "The last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned about Nelson Mandela's condition."
• ___
South Africa: Nelson Mandela inspires compatriots , but some warn he shouldn't be on pedestal
• JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- In November, just before Nelson Mandela's health began a long downward spiral, the leader of a project to build a children's hospital named after the former president briefed him on efforts to raise construction funds. Mandela, 94 years old and infirm, was exasperated by the delays. Then the reflexes of the world statesman took over.
• "Well, get me a few business people. Sit them around my table here and I'll tell them why this is important," Mandela said, according to Sibongile Mkhabela, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital Trust. The fundraiser didn't happen, but the remark was a poignant hint of the Mandela of old, the charismatic leader who, as Mkhabela put it, "knew how to make people believe in things that were not there yet."
• Today Mandela is critically ill in a Pretoria hospital, seemingly close to the end of his life. As the day approaches, whenever it comes, many South Africans are caught in an emotional reckoning. They celebrate this father figure, whose jail-time sacrifice and peacemaking role in the transition from apartheid to democracy resonated worldwide, but they face the hard road of trying to emulate his example and implement his legacy after he is gone.
• "There's a part of Mandela in each of us," said Anthony Prangley, a lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, a University of Pretoria business school whose campus is in Johannesburg.
• "It's important to keep that in mind because we can start to see him as someone who is not accessible, or infallible," Prangley said. "In doing so, we miss the poten (Continued on page 30)
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