Daughter says Mandela feeling 'good'

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Nelson Mandela is feeling "good" and "recovering well" following his release from hospital early this month where he was treated for pneumonia, his daughter said Friday.

"He is good for a 94-year-old," Makaziwe Mandela told AFP. "He is recovering well."

The ailing anti-apartheid hero was released from hospital on April 6 after a 10-day stay. He has since been convalescing at his Johannesburg home.

Asked if the family was happy with her father's current condition, Mandela's oldest surviving child replied "yes".

South Africa's first black president was rushed to hospital before midnight on March 27, suffering from a recurrence of a lung infection.

As part of the treatment, doctors drained a build-up of fluid, known as a pleural effusion or "water on the lungs", that had developed.

His hospitalisation sparked widespread concern about the increasingly frail health of a man who is seen as the father of modern South Africa.

It was the third time in five months that the Nobel Peace Prize winner had been hospitalised.

In March he was admitted for a day for a scheduled check-up and in December he was hospitalised for 18 days for a lung infection and for gallstones surgery.

That stint was his longest since he walked free from 27 years in jail in 1990.

While Mandela's health is a topic of national conversation, many South Africans have come to accept the ageing icon's mortality.

Nearly 20 years after he came to power he remains the unifying symbol in a country still riven by racial tensions and deep inequality.