Nelson Mandela remained hospitalised in a critical state for a fourth week Saturday after doctors ruled out turning off his life support unless he suffered massive organ failure

Nearly 15 years ago Nelson Mandela was unperturbed by his own death, telling a dying teenager that he had lived his life to the full.

After saying he wouldn’t air the family’s “dirty linen” in public, Mandla went on to say his brother Mbuso had “impregnated my wife”. He also said his two other brothers were born out of wedlock.

Nelson Mandela’s doctors have rejected the idea of turning off the ailing icon’s life support unless he suffers massive organ failure, a close family friend told AFP.

South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu Thursday pleaded with Nelson Mandela’s family not to “besmirch” his name after they engaged in a public spat fuelled by a legal dispute over a burial site.

Doctors treating Nelson Mandela said he was in a “permanent vegetative state” and advised his family to turn off his life support machine a week ago, according to court documents obtained by AFP Thursday.

A South African court on Tuesday ordered the return of the remains of three of Nelson Mandela’s children to his ancestral village, following a bitter family feud linked to the eventual burial site of the ailing anti-apartheid hero.

Lawyers for Nelson Mandela’s relatives met Monday to try to resolve a bitter family feud over the eventual burial site of the critically ill anti-apartheid hero.

As Nelson Mandela fights for his life in hospital, his relatives are pitted against each other in a legal battle, reportedly over where members of the family should be buried.

A critically ill Nelson Mandela showed tentative signs of improvement on Thursday as South Africa-bound US President Barack Obama led a chorus of support for the “hero for the world”.