President Robert Mugabe left Harare yesterday for Singapore on what his spokesman George Charamba called “a week-long private visit during which he will also undergo a routine eye check-up.”
Charamba confirmed that the 90-year-old Zanu PF leader will “will undergo a routine eye check-up following a recent procedure on the same.”
Mugabe was seen off at the airport by Vice President Joice Mujuru, Minister in the Office of the President and Cabinet Simon Khaya Moyo, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda, Service Chiefs, Harare Metropolitan Province Minister Miriam Chikukwa and other senior Government officials.
“Honourable Vice President Joice Mujuru will act in His Excellency the President’s absence,” Charamba said in a statement.
Charamba persistently claims Mugabe’s Singapore trips are for a “routine eye checks”. But it’s widely known that the ‘eye check-up’ line is really a euphemism for cancer treatment in Singapore.
Three years ago the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks released a 2008 US diplomatic cable saying then central bank chief Gideon Gono had 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.
Grace Mugabe, the leader’s wife, also told Gono that her spouse was “out of it about 75% of the time”, according to one cable. “The governor confided that Mugabe appeared to be deteriorating mentally and losing his capacity to balance factional interests,” wrote the ambassador. “She wanted him to step down.”
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