Anti-apartheid icon, Nelson Mandela's condition has become critical in the last 24 hours

Thats according to the current president of South Africa Jacob Zuma, who's visited him in hospital this evening in Pretoria.

The former South African leader, Mr Mandela, has been battling a recurrent lung infection in hospital since June 8th.

Mr Zuma says doctors are doing everything possible, and has dismissed reports that Nelson Mandela suffered a heart attack when an ambulance he was in broke down earlier this month.

Mandela, who became South Africa's first black president in 1994, is due to celebrate his 95th birthday on July 18.

He has been hospitalised four times since December, mostly for the pulmonary condition that has plagued him for years.