South Africa’s president said Tuesday that he was pleased Nelson Mandela had gone home from a hospital, saying it indicated the progress that the anti-apartheid leader had made even though he remains in critical condition.

An ambulance returned 95-year-old Mandela to his Johannesburg house on Sunday, and the office of President Jacob Zuma said he will receive the same level of care there that he did in the hospital, administered by the same doctors.

“He remains critical but stable, responding to treatment,” Zuma said in a meeting with journalists in Pretoria, the South African capital. “I think we feel very good that he reached a point where the doctors who were treating him felt he could now leave the hospital to his home, which indicates the progress he had made.”

Mandela was admitted to the hospital on June 8 for what the government described as a recurring lung infection. Legal papers filed by his family said he was on life support.

Nelson Mandela will soon be discharged from hospital to recuperate at home, according to former South African president Thabo Mbeki.

‘I am quite certain that one of these days Madiba (Mandela) will go back home,’ he said at the weekend.

Official statements that South Africa’s first  black president was critical but stable were correct, he said, at a memorial service in Pretoria on Saturday.

Mandela’s wife Graça Machel also said she was ‘less anxious’ about his condition.

‘He continues to respond positively to treatment. I would say that today I am less anxious than I was a week ago,’ she said.

The former apartheid campaigner has been hospitalised for more than five weeks for a recurring lung infection, which has led to four hospital stays in the last six months.

Mandela, who was hospitalized on June 8, turns 95 on Thursday.

Last week, a close friend of Mandela contradicted the court reports that he was ‘totally conscious’ when he visited him in hospital this week.