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DOCTORS have said that ailing South African statesman Nelson Mandela was in a "permanent vegetative state" and advised his family to turn off his life support, court documents reveal. The 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero remains in a �critical but stable� condition after nearly four weeks in hospital. In a legal filing from June 26, medics said: "He is in a permanent vegetative state and is assisted in breathing by a life support machine "The Mandela family have been advised by the medical practitioners that his life support machine should be switched off." Mandela - South Africa's first democratically-elected president - is receiving treatment for a recurring lung infection in his fourth hospital stay in six months.