South Africa: Nelson Mandela in hospital – condition “serious but stable”

Former South African President Nelson Mandela. PHOTO/PETER DEJONG /AP

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was receiving medical treatment for a lung infection on Sunday after spending a second night in a hospital.

There was no official update on 94-year-old Mandela’s condition, described in a government statement on Saturday as “serious but stable.”

The anti-apartheid pro-democracy icon, has now been taken to a hospital four times since December, with the last discharge coming on April 6 after doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia and drained fluid from his lung area.

Worshippers at a Sunday church service in the Johannesburg township of Soweto prayed for the recovery of Mandela, who was freed in 1990 after 27 years as a prisoner of brutal, white racist rule and won election to the presidency in all-race elections in 1994.

At the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, Father Sebastian Rousso said Mandela, seen by many as a symbol of reconciliation, played a key role “not only for ourselves as South Africans, but for the world.”

Welcome Tempa, a construction worker, said he prayed daily for Mandela, who retired from public life years ago and had been receiving medical care at his Johannesburg home until his latest transfer to a hospital.

Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been particularly vulnerable to respiratory problems since contracting tuberculosis during his long imprisonment. The bulk of that period was spent on Robben Island, an outpost off the coast of Cape Town where Mandela and other prisoners spent part of the time toiling in a stone quarry.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press