JOHANNESBURG, July 18 (Reuters) Nelson Mandela celebrated a quiet 88th birthday with his family today as South Africans wished the anti-apartheid hero many more birthdays to come.
Mandela, who formally retired from public life in 2004, spent the day with his extended family in his ancestral home of Qunu in the rural Eastern Cape province. He had no public events scheduled.
But South Africa's media was awash with birthday cheer. Radio call-in shows and newspapers brimmed with goodwill for the man credited with ending apartheid and guiding South Africa to peaceful multi-racial democracy.
President Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela in 1999, issued a statement expressing hopes that the man affectionately known as ''Tata'', or grandfather, across South Africa would ''live long enough to see the full bloom of our nation as it regenerates itself into a peaceful, prosperous and united people''.
Mandela has drastically cut back his public appearances and aides say that while he remains in generally good health he needs to spend more time resting and with family.
Today also marked Mandela's wedding anniversary to his third wife Graca Machel, whom he married on his 80th birthday in 1998.
The Nobel Peace laureate, who spent 27 years in apartheid jails before becoming South Africa's first black president after historic all-race elections in 1994, now concentrates on social causes, particularly Africa's fight against HIV/AIDS.
His own life was touched by the epidemic, which infects an estimated one out of nine South Africans, when AIDS killed his only surviving son Makgatho in 2005.
REUTERS SHB PM1633
Mandela, who formally retired from public life in 2004, spent the day with his extended family in his ancestral home of Qunu in the rural Eastern Cape province. He had no public events scheduled.
But South Africa's media was awash with birthday cheer. Radio call-in shows and newspapers brimmed with goodwill for the man credited with ending apartheid and guiding South Africa to peaceful multi-racial democracy.
President Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela in 1999, issued a statement expressing hopes that the man affectionately known as ''Tata'', or grandfather, across South Africa would ''live long enough to see the full bloom of our nation as it regenerates itself into a peaceful, prosperous and united people''.
Mandela has drastically cut back his public appearances and aides say that while he remains in generally good health he needs to spend more time resting and with family.
Today also marked Mandela's wedding anniversary to his third wife Graca Machel, whom he married on his 80th birthday in 1998.
The Nobel Peace laureate, who spent 27 years in apartheid jails before becoming South Africa's first black president after historic all-race elections in 1994, now concentrates on social causes, particularly Africa's fight against HIV/AIDS.
His own life was touched by the epidemic, which infects an estimated one out of nine South Africans, when AIDS killed his only surviving son Makgatho in 2005.
REUTERS SHB PM1633
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