The wall of messages, ballons, candles left for Nelson Mandela

PRETORIA, South Africa — Singing crowds gathered outside the hospital where Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s former president, lay in a critical state for a third consecutive day on Tuesday, as family members held an emergency meeting at his ancestral village. 

 

Mr. Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, at least two grandchildren and clan elders gathered at Mr. Mandela’s retirement house in Qunu, the remote southern village where he grew up, according to news media reports. 

The subject of the meeting was not publicly disclosed, but Naplisi Mandela, an elder of the Mandela family, told the South African Press Association that they had gathered to discuss “delicate matters” — a euphemism widely interpreted to mean preparations for Mr. Mandela’s death.

Meanwhile, in Pretoria, doctors continued to treat Mr. Mandela for a lung ailment that he contracted on Robben Island, the notorious apartheid-era prison where he spent much of his 27 years behind bars until his release in 1990. He was hospitalized here on June 8, his fourth hospitalization since late last year. 

In a statement, President Jacob Zuma said Mr. Mandela’s condition was unchanged. On Sunday, he visited Mr. Mandela and pronounced that his state had deteriorated from stable to critical. 

Noting that Mr. Mandela’s 95th birthday is on July 18, Mr. Zuma urged South Africans to celebrate his achievements. Still, after 18 days of anxious vigil, many appeared to be steeling themselves for the worst. 

Larger-than-usual crowds gathered at the gates of the Mediclinic Heart Hospital to pay tribute to Mr. Mandela, as people dropped off cards at a growing shrine and sang songs. “There is no one like you, Nelson Mandela,” one group sang in the Sotho language.

Others sang church hymns, in some cases replacing the word “God” with “Mandela.”

“He’s our freedom fighter,” said Gerald Moshe, a 19-year-old student. “Without him, we’d be under apartheid. Now we can do anything.” 

The emotional scenes were part of a perceptible shift in the national mood. Until recently, many South Africans had avoided talking about Mr. Mandela’s fate, calling it culturally inappropriate to speculate about any ailing figure, much less one as revered as Mr. Mandela, who played a central role in South Africa’s transition from white-led minority rule to historic multirace elections in 1994. 

But now many are openly talking about the prospect of bidding him farewell.

“We love him, but we know that there is a time when everyone has to take a bow,” said Siya Cele, 24, a sales consultant, standing by the hospital gates. “Still,” he added, “we would prefer that it did not happen inside a hospital.”

Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa’s deputy president, said, “We must keep him in our prayers and leave the rest to the Almighty to decide on.” 

Mr. Mandela’s declining condition came as President Obama prepared to arrive in South Africa on Friday on the second leg of an African tour that will also take him to Tanzania and Senegal.

But the South African government said a planned meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Mandela — both the first black leaders of their countries — now looked unlikely.

“President Obama would have loved to see President Mandela, but he is indisposed,” said Maite Nkoane Mashebane, South Africa’s minister of international relations, according to Agence France-Presse. 

Mr. Mandela retired from public life in 2004 and made his last public appearance before the soccer World Cup final in South Africa in 2010. Last year he moved from Johannesburg to his home in Qunu, where he had spent a happy childhood tending to his father’s animals and stick fighting with friends, according to his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom.”

Mr. Mandela is widely expected to be buried in or around Qunu, where his family has a private graveyard.