President Robert Mugabe did travel to South Africa last week, but the 79-year-old leader did not go there for emergency medical treatment, and was on holiday, a spokesperson for his office said on Monday.
”The president is as fit as none of his detractors can ever hope to be in their lifetime,” the state-controlled daily Herald quoted George Charamba, permanent secretary in Mugabe’s information department, as saying.
Mugabe was ”on leave and had, in the context of that leave, gone to South Africa strictly on private and not official business.”
He dismissed reports that the visit was linked to remarks by South African president Thabo Mbeki to visiting German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder last week that Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party was about to enter into formal talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Also at the weekend, some reports claimed Mugabe had to be flown to a South African military hospital for emergency medical treatment after a ”violent fit of vomiting”.
Mugabe, who turns 80 next month, has appeared in good health in recent months, although his officials never issue medical bulletins for him, except to deny reports saying he is ill.
In 2001, however, diplomats said after meeting him said he showed signs of having suffered a minor stroke, and for months around then his features when he appeared in public would be radically altered, from drawn and grey to swollen-faced. Medical experts speculated he was on heavy medication.
Controversy has also surrounded repeated assertions by Mbeki in the last year that Zanu-PF and the MDC are engaging in negotiations to end the country’s political and humanitarian crisis, as each time the South African leader’s claims have been
denied.
”I don’t know where Mbeki gets his latest information from,” said a member of the MDC’s national executive council at the weekend. In December, he said, shortly after Mbeki announced that the two sides were close to talks, MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube briefly met justice minister Patrick Chinamasa to ask him for a date for a start to discussions, the official said.
”Chinamasa said, ‘sure’, but that’s the last we’ve heard of it,” he said.
”Absolutely nothing is going on.” – Sapa