Mugabe returns to Zimbabwe after ‘check-up’
By Fortune Tazvida (Managing Editor)
On Saturday Zimbabwe’s 88 year old president returned from Singapore where he had gone for what his aides called ‘a routine medical check-up’.
Similar trips have been conducted without much explanation to the public. The frenzy that accompanied his last trip to Singapore in April this year with some reports claiming he was on his death-bed seems to have been a wake-up call.
This time the state media covered the trip. On Saturday state television described the Zanu PF leader as “fit and strong” and showed him being received at the airport by senior government and security officials.
According to a leaked 2008 US diplomatic cable, central bank chief Gideon Gono told then-US ambassador James McGee that Mugabe had prostate cancer and had been advised by doctors he had less than five years to live (up to 2013).
