Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe may probe top party officials who said that he has prostate cancer in US diplomatic cables on the whistle blower website WikiLeaks, state media said Wednesday.
“The president was very clear that as a party we are looking into the matter to establish the origins and authenticity of the statements regarding what WikiLeaks revealed,” said Rugare Gumbo, spokesman for Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
“The president said the nation has to wait until we examine the permutations of the WikiLeaks revelations,” he said in the state-run Herald newspaper.
Gumbo said the party’s central committee discussed the WikiLeaks issue and that Mugabe also said some of the cables might have been exaggerated.
Several leaked US cables released by WikiLeaks exposed clandestine meetings between senior Zanu-PF and government officials and US diplomats, which discussed several issues including Mugabe’s health which are normally not openly discussed.
In one of the cables, central bank chief Gideon Gono told a US ambassador that Mugabe has prostate cancer and was advised by doctors in 2008 that he had less than five years to live.
In another cable, indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere allegedly told former US ambassador Tom McDonald that Mugabe and his lieutenants should “phase out of their leadership role”.
Last month Zanu-PF said the revelations by WikiLeaks are “disturbing and demoralising.”
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party, Mugabe’s partner in a tense unity government, said it would not concern itself with revelations by WikiLeaks.
But last week a provincial committee of the party suspended deputy justice minister Obert Gutu for describing Tsvangirai as a “weak” leader in a discussion exposed by Wikileaks. — Sapa-AFP