Nelson Mandela was hospitalized early yesterday for a lung infection — his fourth hospital stay in seven months.
The former South African president, who turns 95 next month, was listed as in “serious but stable” condition at a Pretoria hospital.
South Africans were bracing for the worst as Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel, canceled an appearance at a London summit and flew home to be at his side.
Mandela has had respiratory problems since contracting tuberculosis during his 27-year imprisonment on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town.
He was last in the hospital in April, when doctors treated him for pneumonia.
The Nobel peace laureate served as South Africa’s first black president after his African National Congress party ended decades of apartheid rule in 1994.