All signs indicate that Nelson Mandela really has slowed to the point where it seems fair to ask about the state of his health. In recent days it was announced that Mandela almost certainly will not attend the World Cup, an event I always assumed that he would go to the ends of the Earth to be a part of. This week Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said that he is “thankful in a certain sense that Madiba was not always that aware of what was going on” and thus is perhaps not familiar with the current state of South Africa. Winnie Mandela said something similar a few months back. We all hope that Madiba endures to see the twentieth anniversary of his 1994 election and beyond. But we might want to brace ourselves for the worst sooner than we might have hoped.