Presidency spokesman Mac Maharaj yesterday refused to comment on a weekend report by US TV channel CBS that Nelson Mandela was “in distress” at one point last week.
South African journalist Deborah Patta, reporting for CBS news, said Mandela had undergone a “minor procedure” to unblock a dialysis tube on Friday.
Dialysis is the use of machines to take over kidney functioning when the organs are no longer able to work on their own.
Patta told the network that Mandela had “two scares last week”.
In one instance, “he was not responding to his [medications]” and in another “life-support machines indicated that he was in distress”.
She gave no other details.
Maharaj would say only that Mandela was in a critical but stable condition, and was responding to treatment.
Last month, in a report for the same US channel, Patta broke the story about the military ambulance, in which Mandela was being taken to hospital, breaking down on the highway from Johannesburg to Pretoria early on Saturday, June 8.
Mandela has been in hospital for over a month. – timeslive.co.za