Mandela still ‘critical’ after reported operation

South Africa’s presidency said on Sunday that Nelson Mandela was still critically ill in hospital but improving slightly, declining to comment on a report the anti-apartheid hero had undergone an operation. 

The former statesman underwent a ‘surgical procedure to unblock a dialysis tube’on Friday just before marking his seventh week at a Pretoria health facility, according to US news network CBS.

The operation was ‘minor’, the network reported. But presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj would not confirm that the procedure took place. ‘He is critical, stable, but there is some improvement,’ he told AFP. 

According to earlier reports the 95-year-old Nobel peace laureate was breathing with the aid of a ventilator and had undergone dialysis a few weeks after he was hospitalized for a lung infection on 8 June.