South Africa: Mandela hospitalized with pneumonia in hospital

His condition is "serious but stable": South Africa's first black president Nelson Mandela has to be re-treated in a hospital for pneumonia. For the 94-year-old is the fourth hospital stay within a few months.

Johannesburg / Berlin - The world cares about Nelson Mandela. South Africa's former president was admitted because of severe pneumonia in a hospital in Pretoria again on Saturday night. The office of the incumbent head of state Jacob Zuma announced that the state of the 94-year-old was "serious but stable".



Zuma's spokesman said about Mandela: "He is a fighter he has often recovered and he will soon be back with us Let us pray for him..."
It is already the fourth hospital stay of the former anti-apartheid fighter within a few months. Only in March he was treated there for a few weeks inpatient health check for pneumonia. In December, the Nobel Peace Prize was nearly three weeks with a lung infection in hospital after he had been removed gallstones.

Mandela lung problems date back to his time as a political prisoner when he contracted tuberculosis. He was imprisoned for 27 years, most of them in the notorious prison on Robben Iceland. In 1990, he was released and was named after the first free elections in South Africa's first black president four years later. This marked the end of the apartheid regime was sealed. Mandela stepped down as head of state in 1999. His last public appearance took place during the football World Cup in South Africa in 2010.