JOHANNESBURG -South African anti-apartheid activist and veteran cleric, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was responding well to a new course of antibiotics, his daughter said on Tuesday, following social media reports her father had died.

The 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has struggled with ill health in recent years, was re-admitted to hospital on Saturday to treat an infection following surgery last week.

“He is in very good spirits and much more like himself than he has been,” Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth told a media briefing, adding that her father could leave hospital soon.

“The hoax messages are very disturbing and incredibly unkind… It is very distressing to hear that kind of news over Twitter, particularly for family,” Mpho said, referring to social media reports on Tutu’s premature death.

Tutu spoke against white-minority rule from his pulpit, earning him global acclaim.

said to be ‘jovial as usual’ in hospital

South Africa’s deputy president says he visited Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu in a hospital and found the retired archbishop to be “jovial as usual” while being treated for an infection.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says the 84-year-old Tutu was in “high spirits” and discussed subjects including education and politics.

Tutu says on Twitter that he told Ramaphosa “he looked beautiful considering his difficult job.”

Tutu was readmitted to a Cape Town hospital Saturday, days after he left following three weeks of treatment. He has been treated for infections resulting from past treatment for prostate cancer.

One of his daughters, Rev. Mpho A. Tutu van Furth, said Tuesday that he is “healing very well.”

Desmond Tutu was an outspoken opponent of apartheid, South Africa’s former system of white minority rule.

– Reuters/AP