Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Man-dela turns 88 today and despite being in exceptional health for his age, South Africa's favorite son is appearing less and less in the public eye.
Madiba, as Mandela is affectionately known by his Xhosa clan name, will spend a quiet birthday with his family at his ancestral home in Qunu, in South Africa's rural Eastern Cape province, his foundation said.
"Madiba will have no public engagements at all on Tuesday," the Nelson Mandela Foundation's Verne Harris said.
"This shift is taking place in response to Madiba's own request. He has retired formally from public life," Harris said, referring to an announcement the Nobel laurate made two years ago.
But although Mandela on a personal level has withdrawn largely from public engagements, his foundation is continuing to capture the legacy of one of the world's best-known figures.
"Madiba has given us at the foundation his personal mandate to shift to memory and dialogue work," Harris said.
The shift to capture Mandela's legacy through remembrance -- including photo exhibitions of his early years and a tribute to his former university -- is seen as an acknowledgment that the statesman who steered South Africa after its first democratic elections in 1994, will not be around forever.
Although his health is slowly failing, Mandela remains in remarkably good shape for a man his age who spent almost three decades of his life in prison.
"His short term memory is not up to scratch, according to those close to him, and his knees are causing him distress," the Johannesburg-based Saturday Star reported over the weekend.
"But he remains in good spirits and his `almost wicked' sense of humor ... shows no sign of disappearing," the paper said.
Yet, Mandela still has a punishing schedule of engagements to fulfil around his birthday. It started last week with the launch of a book of a series of lectures by prominent black thinkers on the "Meaning of Mandela" -- and the photo exhibition by Alf Khumalo and Jurgen Schadeburg.
On Thursday, he and other graduates of Fort Hare University -- the alma mater of many of the struggle's heroes -- will be given honorarium rings. A week later, on July 29, his birthday will be capped by a speech given by President Thabo Mbeki in his honor at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.
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