JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela, the first president of a democratic, multiracial South Africa, was hospitalized on Saturday to address a longstanding abdominal complaint, the office of South Africa's current president, Jacob Zuma, announced.
"Madiba has had a long-standing abdominal complaint and doctors feel it needs proper specialist medical attention," the statement said, using Mr. Mandela's honorific clan name.
Mr. Mandela, who battled apartheid and spent 27 years imprisoned by the white minority government, is 93 years old, and has been in virtual seclusion for the last several years. His health is closely watched; a hospitalization in January 2011 set off a panic across South Africa.
Mr. Mandela's last major public appearance was in 2010, at the final game of the World Cup in Johannesburg. For the past year he has spent most of his time in Qunu, the Eastern Cape village where he spent most of his childhood.
Rumors about Mr. Mandela's health have swirled for years, even in the earliest days after his release from prison in 1990, when the apartheid regime was crumbling and earnest talks between the African National Congress and the ruling National Party began. His lack of bitterness toward the white minority made him a global symbol of reconciliation, tolerance and forbearance.
Mr. Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with South Africa's then-president, F. W. de Klerk, in 1993, and elected the country's first black president in 1994.
When Mr. Mandela was hospitalized last year, there was fevered speculation in the news media in the face of virtual silence from the government. Reporters spent the night outside the hospital where he had been admitted, and many feared he was at death's door. But after two nights in the hospital he was released and went home to Qunu.
At that time, doctors treating Mr. Mandela said he was in fine form.
"For a 92-year-old, he surprises us on a daily basis with his powers of recovery," Lt. Gen. Vejay Ramlakan, the surgeon general of South Africa's National Defense Force, told a news conference after his last hospitalization.
This time, the government appears to have announced his hospitalization immediately, perhaps hoping to avoid the panic of last year's health scare.
