After weeks of denial, South African President Jacob Zuma finally admitted late yesterday that legendary statesman Nelson Mandela’s health has deteriorated and that he is now in critical condition. The confirmation came a day after News Express, quoting foreign media sources, reported that Mandela’s family and the South African Government had been covering up the true health condition of the iconic former South President.

“The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well-looked after and is comfortable. He is in good hands,” Zuma said in a statement issued after visiting the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero at a hospital Sunday evening. Zuma said he was informed by the medical team that Mandela’s condition had become critical in the past 24 hours.

The South African President also met Graca Machel, Mandela’s wife, at the hospital in Pretoria and discussed the former leader’s condition, according to the statement. Zuma was accompanied on the visit by Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress.

Mandela, who spent 27 in jail years under white racist rule and became South Africa’s first black President in all-race elections in 1994 (four years after his release from prison) has been hospitalised since June 8 for what the government said was a recurring lung infection.

Mandela has been vulnerable to respiratory problems since contracting tuberculosis during his imprisonment under apartheid. Most of those years were spent on Robben Island, a forbidding outpost off the coast of Cape Town.

•Photo shows the ailing Mandela.