Zimbabwe on Wednesday said President Robert Mugabe had returned from a one-week visit abroad in good health, denying reports that he had been taken to hospital in Dubai.
”The president came back last night [Tuesday]. He was fine, he was not sick as reported by some hostile South African media. He had taken a one-week break to the Far East,” a senior government official told Agence France-Presse.
Zimbabwean Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa said he was unable to comment on the reports that Mugabe was undergoing medical treatment.
”We are reading it in the newspapers,” he said of reports in the South African media of Mugabe’s illness.
”As far as I know, he is well, unless it is a minor ailment like flu, which might have happened while he was away.”
The Times in South Africa reported on Wednesday that the 85-year-old president had been rushed to hospital in Dubai on Sunday after ”a serious health scare”.
Mugabe had not been seen in public since Tuesday last week. The newspaper said he had been receiving treatment from a Malaysian urologist for a prostate condition. Mugabe is a close friend of former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad and a regular visitor to the country.
The Zimbabwe official said the veteran leader’s meeting with South African President Jacob Zuma would go ahead Thursday in Harare as planned.
”We saw the story yesterday and the day before yesterday but we cannot spend all the time responding to the issues of the president’s health when he is fine,” the official said.
Zuma’s trip, his first to Harare since he was elected in May, follows a meeting with Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in Johannesburg where he pledged to raise ”very weighty issues” with Mugabe about the country’s faltering power-sharing deal. –Sapa-AFP-dpa