Mandela Leaves Hospital

Formal South African president NELSON MANDELA  left the hospital on Saturday after more than a week of treatment of pneumonia                                                                                                                                  
              He was in hospital briefly in early March for a check-up and was hospitalized in December for nearly three weeks with a lung infection and after surgery to remove gallstones.
Mandela stepped down as president in 1999 and has not been politically active for a decade. But he is still revered at home and abroad for leading the long campaign against apartheid and then championing racial reconciliation while in office.
His lung problems date from when he contracted tuberculosis as a political prisoner. He spent 27 years on Robben Island and in other jails for trying to oust the white-minority government.
Mandela’s last notable public appearance was at the final of the soccer World Cup in 2010. Since then, he has stayed at his home in Johannesburg or in Qunu, the remote village where he was born in the impoverished province of Eastern Cape.