Mandela's Health OK, South Africa President Says

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - President Jacob Zuma has reassured the nation about the health of its favorite citizen, Nelson Mandela, but cautioned South Africans not to be surprised to hear the aging anti-apartheid icon has to seek medical treatment from time to time.

The 92-year-old Mandela's two night hospitalization last month to be treated for an acute respiratory infection set off a media frenzy.

In his state of the nation address Thursday, Zuma said the government has established a fund that would promote job creation, a central issue in a country with a near 25 percent unemployment rate. Zuma also announced tax breaks of 20 billion rand ($2.7 billion) to boost the manufacturing sector.

Referring to Mandela by the clan name South Africans use affectionately, Zuma said he wanted "to assure the nation that Madiba is receiving very good medical care, and is comfortable."

"We need to accept the reality that President Mandela, who is loved by all of us, young and old, men and women, black and white, is not young anymore," Zuma said. "He will, from time to time, visit medical facilities for checkups, which is normal for a person of his age. We should allow him to do so with dignity, and give the family and the medical team the space to look after him, on our behalf, in privacy."

Zuma spoke of Mandela's health early in a speech devoted to the need to improve the lives of the country's impoverished black majority. Zuma returned to Mandela at the end of his speech, urging South Africans to draw inspiration from Mandela's 1994 inauguration address as South Africa's first black president. The historic inaugural address was a reminder "of the need to work together."

Mandela is as unifying a symbol for South Africans as their flag or their national anthem, and it is perhaps no coincidence Zuma wove him so prominently into a major speech at a time when the country seems particularly riven along economic, class and racial lines.

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Associated Press writer Donna Bryson in Johannesburg contributed to this report.