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Johannesburg - Nelson Mandela was admitted to a hospital in Pretoria Saturday to undergo tests and was said to be doing well, the South Africa government said.
The 94-year-old former president and anti-apartheid icon was admitted for tests "consistent with his age", the office of President Jacob Zuma said.
The government insisted there was "no cause for alarm".
Madiba, as he is affectionately known by South Africans, has all-but retired from public life, choosing to live in his childhood hometown of Qunu in the rural Eastern Cape.
Villagers in the town reported a slightly unusual movement of police around Mandela's Qunu homestead earlier in the day.
He was later flown from Qunu to the capital Pretoria, around 900km away.
A traditional leader for the village, Nokwanele Balizulu, told AFP she saw Mandela shortly before he was taken to hospital.
"I was called by the Mandela family saying Tata [grandfather] is not well. I rushed there and I saw he is not well," she said in the local Xhosa dialect.
Rumours of his failing health or even death flare up periodically, forcing the government to issue assurances that all is well.
