Significantly, President Jacob Zuma visited him twice in a week, which would suggest there is more concern over the 94-year-old statesman’s condition than  is reflected in the cheery messages from the presidency.

From Zuma we learn that   Madiba “was happy to have visitors on this special day (Christmas) and is looking much better. The doctors are happy with the progress that he is making. We found him in good spirits. He shouted my clan name, Nxamalala, as I walked into the ward.”

This sounds heartening. Regrettably not everyone will believe what is now being said about Mandela’s health. After all, it is barely two weeks since we discovered we were being deceived about which hospital was looking after him.

In what presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj later described as a “learning curve”, media and the public were led to believe Madiba  was at 1 Military Hospital when he was in fact  at Pretoria’s  Mediclinic Heart Hospital.

We have no doubt there was deliberate deception by Maharaj and by Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, which led scores of reporters and photographers to spend a week camping  outside the wrong hospital, feeding wrong information to the nation and to  much of the wider world.

In carrying out this deception, Maharaj and company were trampling on an agreement reached between editors, media executives and  government following the publicity circus surrounding Madiba’s stay at Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital in February.

Trust is broken. The upshot now  is the media and the public are sceptical. We doubt we know what ails Madiba, or how ill he is.