The president's latest faux pas came as he tried to draw a tortuous link between the revered former South African leader and the sectarian violence in Iraq.

“I heard somebody say, 'Where’s Mandela?” said Bush. “Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas,” he added, to the general bemusement of the White House press.

According to The Daily Mail, the South African authorities were besieged with calls after Bush’s speech, which was carried live by TV news networks.

Many viewers feared the country’s first black president and Nobel Peace Prize winner had died.

But Mandela on Saturday assured the world that, contrary to the impression given by the President of the United States, reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated.

Jailed for 27 years by the former apartheid government in South Africa, Mandela remained a constant thorn in the side of the white minority government.

On Friday, his office put out an assurance that, at 89, he was very much alive.

Mandela has been a strong opponent of the war in Iraq. Before the 2003 invasion, he condemned Bush as “a president who can’t think properly and wants to plunge the world into a holocaust”.

Not the first time
It is not the first time Mandela’s demise has been announced prematurely.

In 2003, CNN accidentally ran his obituary on its website and earlier this year a fringe Rightwing-group claimed he had died. He was on holiday in Mozambique at the time.

He retired from public life three years ago after beating prostate cancer in 2001.

President Bush is known for making gaffes. He mixed up Austria with Australia in a speech in Sydney earlier this month.

Then there was his unstatesmanlike “Yo, Blair” greeting to Tony Blair at the G-8 summit in St Petersburg last year.

Supporters, however, say his folksy style has helped build his popularity with Middle America.