JOHANNESBURG, Dec 10: South Africa’s former President Nelson Mandela underwent more medical tests on Monday in a military hospital as the public and journalists outside asked: What, if anything, is wrong with the health of the 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon?    

Government officials in charge of releasing information about Mandela have repeatedly declined to provide specifics about Mandela’s now three-day hospitalisation, calling on citizens to respect the beloved politician’s privacy. Yet Mandela represents something more than a man to many in this nation of 50 million people and to the world at large, and the longer he remains in hospital care, the louder the demand for the private details about his health will grow.

“He symbolises what our country can achieve with a statesman of his stature. He’s our inspiration and personifies our aspirations,” an editorial in Monday’s edition of the Sowetan newspaper reads. “And that's why we dread his hospital visits, routine or not. That's why even now when we are told not to panic, we do.''

Mandela is revered for being a leader of the struggle against racist white rule in South Africa and for preaching reconciliation once he emerged from prison in 1990 after 27 years behind bars. He won South Africa’s first truly democratic elections in 1994, serving one five-year term. The Nobel laureate later retired from public life to live in his remote village of Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, and last made a public appearance when his country hosted the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament.—AP