Anti-apartheid leader and former South African President Nelson Mandela returned to his home yesterday where he will continue to receive intensive care after three months in hospital with a lung ailment.

Mandela, 95, had spent 87 days in a Pretoria hospital after he was rushed there in early June suffering from a recurring infection of the lungs, a legacy of the nearly three decades he spent in jail under apartheid.

“Madiba’s condition remains critical and is at times unstable. Nevertheless, his team of doctors are convinced that he will receive the same level of intensive care at his Houghton home that he received in Pretoria,” South Africa’s presidency said.

It referred to Mandela by the traditional clan name by which he is affectionately known.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s latest hospitalisation in June had attracted a wave of attention and sympathy at home and across the world.

His home in Johannesburg’s Houghton suburb had been “reconfigured” to allow him to receive special care there, the presidency added. Police blocked off a section of the street in the upscale neighbourhood, where a crowd of reporters and camera crews had gathered.

It is a day of celebration, he is finally back home

“It is a day of celebration for us, that he is finally back home with us,” Mandela’s grandson and heir Mandla said in a statement, acknowledging that he was “not a young man anymore”.

Mandla said his grandfather’s discharge from hospital disproved claims that Mandela was in a “vegetative” state “waiting for his (life) support machines to be switched off, in effect declaring him dead”.