Zim leader’s treatment in SA ‘no cause for alarm’
ZIMBABWE’S main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been hospitalised in South Africa after his health deteriorated, though a senior party official said his condition was stable.
“He is in South Africa on account of a medical cause. He is being attended to,” a senior official from Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We are monitoring the situation. He will be fine, it’s only that he was overwhelmed with work and his health deteriorated.”
Luke Tamborinyoka, Tsvangirai’s spokesman, disputed what he termed “morbid media reports that he is critical and is battling for his life”, insisting he had gone to South Africa for a routine medical procedure and “is in a very stable condition”.
Tamborinyoka did not mention what was ailing the former prime minister.
Tsvangirai, 65, announced last year he had been diagnosed with cancer of the colon and had begun chemotherapy.
News Day independent daily earlier reported Tsvangirai had been airlifted to South Africa early on Friday morning after he fell ill.
“He was on oxygen and a drip and had been vomiting heavily,” the paper said.
Tamborinyoka, however, said Tsvangirai had urged the nation not to panic about his health and that he would return in time to campaign for next year’s elections.
President Robert Mugabe, 93, Tsvangirai’s rival for more than a decade, regularly flies to Singapore, reportedly for medical reasons, thought most details about his health are kept under wraps.
Tsvangirai’s party has been riven by divisions since he struck a troubled four-year power-sharing deal with Mugabe after violent and disputed elections in 2008. — AFP