Post date: Feb 26, 2012 12:58:18 AM
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (FEBRUARY 25, 2012) (REUTERS) - South African president Jacob Zuma issued a statement on Saturday (February 25) saying doctors were satisfied with the former president Nelson Mandela's condition.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela is conscious and in a stable condition according to a report issued by his doctors after he was admitted in hospital and the ANC says "no need to panic".
Mandela is in hospital where officials said he was admitted to investigate a medical complaint.ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said earlier reports by foreign media that he had undergone surgery for a hernia were not correct.
Part of the confusion in the morning was the result of authorities refusing to divulge information about Mandela's whereabouts.
Khoza said he did not know where those reports had come from.
"The advice that we've been given is that his location is not going to be disclosed because we wanted to afford him some privacy so that he could recuperate under good conditions and that's why it hasn't been disclosed at all, but in terms of the confusion that might have been there, we know that earlier it was suggested that he was undergoing surgery which we were not aware of and that's why we had said let's wait for the completion of the consultation and we would knows in the end, but it turned out it was just a procedure it wasn't surgery per se, so we do not know how that came up" Khoza said.
His message to the people of South Africa was 'don't panic'
"President Mandela is fine that's what we want to reassure people. It wasn't an emergency, his admission was not an emergency it was just to make sure that he undergoes procedure to determine the complains, he is fine we've been reassured and that's why he will be discharged tomorrow or Monday, what we also wanted to say is that people need not panic because there was no need to panic, so South African must just continue praying for him as they have always done to recuperate" he said.
Mandela has been in poor health since his hospitalisation a year ago, and has not appeared in public since. He has spent his time at his home in Johannesburg's northern suburbs and his ancestral village of Qunu in the impoverished Eastern Cape.