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A woman with a startling resemblance to ailing former President Nelson Mandela has been turned away from the hospital where the anti-apartheid leader is being treated, as she attempted to see the man she claims is her father, a media report said on Monday.
Onica Nyembezi Mothoa, 65, claims she is Mandela's love child born in 1947 to her mother Sophie Majeni when the latter was a domestic worker.
Mothoa told The Star daily that she was previously manhandled by security staff at the gates of the Mandela ancestral home in Qunu, where he had retired to, when she tried to see him.
Ninety-four-year-old Mandela is entering his third week in the Pretoria Heart Hospital, with the presidency saying he was still critical but stable.
Prayers continue to be held all over the country for Mandela who spent 27 years in prison before leading South Africa to its first democratic elections in 1994.
"I don't want him to die before I meet him. I don't know why the family is not allowing him to tell them if he knows anything about my mother," Mothoa told the daily.
"If they are not hiding anything, why are they not giving him the opportunity to meet me," she said, adding that she had earlier indicated her willingness to undergo DNA test to prove her claim.
In August 2010, the Nelson Mandela Foundation undertook to investigate Mothoa's claim, but later said they had handed the matter to the Mandela family for resolution. In the past, a woman, Mpho Pule, also made a claim of being a love child of Mandela.
Pule died in 2010, just a month after the Foundation said they were close to confirming her claim. Mandela’s family spokesman Mandla Mandela did not respond to calls from the daily.
Image: A girl holds a rug with a portrait of Nelson Mandela on it as she stands outside the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital, where the ailing former South African President is being treated, in Pretoria
Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters