Post date: Feb 26, 2012 4:11:21 PM
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (FEBRUARY 26, 2012) (REUTERS - South Africans on Sunday (February 26) welcomed the news that former president Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital where he underwent a non-invasive keyhole surgery for a chronic abdominal complaint.
South Africans say they are happy and relieved that former President Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital, after doctors found he was not seriously ill.
"We are happy when he's out because we've been worried about that he's so sick, he's been very nice for us, you see like that we love him so much he must get better," a Johannesburg resident said.
"I think that obviously he's a very important figure to South Africans, I mean he's also an important figure to the rest of the rest of the world. So, yesterday our hearts stopped for a second or so when we got that news. We are all very relieved. He is everybody's father. We want him to live fore ever," said one man, speaking in Nelson Mandela Square in Johannesburg.
"It was a shame to hear the news but I am glad he is out I am glad he is fine now and it is what it is, life is strange, ups and down, but I am glad he's out. Mandela, he is the world president, remember that, the world president. We should nominate him; there should be an award to nominate him as the world president," another resident of the city said.
"The doctors have decided to send him home as the diagnostic procedure he underwent did not indicate anything seriously wrong with him," President Jacob Zuma's office said in a statement.
His departure from Pretoria's "1 Military" hospital in a multi-vehicle motorcade marks the end of an anxious 24-hour wait for South Africa's 50 million people, after Mandela was admitted on Saturday morning with "long-standing abdominal pain".
The government insisted throughout there was nothing to panic about.
Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said Mandela had had "investigative laparoscopy" - a tiny camera inserted into the abdomen - and denied reports he had undergone surgery for a hernia.
Even though he stepped down at the end of his first term in office in 1999, South Africa's first black president continues to occupy a central position in the psyche of a country ruled by the 10 percent white minority until all-race elections in 1994.
He as been in poor health since he was hospitalised a year ago with respiratory problems, and this latest scare hammered home to many that the 93-year-old, who was incarcerated for 27 years by the apartheid government, may not live for much longer.