Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu has checked into a South African hospital for treatment of a persistent infection.
The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate will undergo tests to discover the cause of the infection.
The foundation says 81-year-old Tutu spent this morning in his office before going to a Cape Town hospital and was in good spirits.
Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu's non-surgical treatment is expected to take five days - and the campaigner is said to be 'good spirits'
It added the non-surgical treatment is expected to take five days.
Tutu was a vigorous campaigner against the system of white racist rule known as apartheid, which ended when democratic elections were held in 1994.
The Nobel Pirze winner is going to a Cape Town hospital for the procedure
The Nobel Prize Winner was also the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa and primate of the Anglican Church of South Africa.
He became a prominent leader, crusading for justice and racial conciliation in South Africa.
In 1984 he received a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions to that cause.
His hospitalisation comes weeks after Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, was taken into hospital.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has not been seen in public since 2010 and in April was discharged from hospital following a nine-day stay for treatment of pneumonia.
It was the third hospital visit for the former anti-apartheid leader since December when he underwent treatment for gallstones and a lung infection.
He is currently receiving medical care at his Johannesburg home.
Mr Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994 after elections were held, bringing an end to the system of white racist rule known as apartheid.
Following his release from prison in 1990, he was widely credited with averting even greater bloodshed by helping the country's transition to democratic rule.
Following the elections in 1994, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to bear witness to, record and in some cases, grant amnesty to perpetrators of crimes relating to human right violations.
President Mandela asked the former archbishop to chair the TRC, which heard harrowing accounts of the struggle for liberation.
He retired from the Church in 1996 to focus solely on the TRC, and was later named Archbishop Emeritus. In 1997 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent successful treatment in the US.