Pain of Madiba's departure

Makaziwe Mandela was "relieved" when her father, Nelson Mandela, took his last breath.

In an interview with CNN's Robyn Curnow yesterday, a teary Makaziwe said: "When he breathed that last breath it was a relief to me. I couldn't take it anymore.

"There were times I was telling the doctors 'I think enough is enough'. As doctors they had their duty to try everything up to the last moment but, for me, as a daughter it was excruciating watching that."

The interview comes a fortnight after the former president's widow , Graça Machel, spoke to CNN's Christiane Amanpour for the first time after six months in mourning.

Mandela died on December 5 but the year before his death was the hardest, according to Makaziwe, who is also preparing a memoir, After the Great Tree Had Fallen.

Mandela spent 87 days in a Pretoria hospital and, by the time of his death, it was his fourth stay in hospital in six months.

Makaziwe said it was at about this time she began asking: "When do we accept that we have reached the end?"

When Curnow asked her whether Madiba should have been allowed to go sooner, she said: "He was in a wheelchair.

"For me the quality of life was not there . I did not understand why we had to prolong life."

Earlier this week Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu wrote in the UK Guardian that he was in favour of assisted dying, saying Madiba's prolonged decline was "an affront" to his dignity.

He wrote: "What was done to Madiba was disgraceful. There was that occasion when Madiba was televised with political leaders, President Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.

"You could see Madiba was not fully there. He was not connecting. My friend was no longer himself."