Mugabe ‘offered asylum in Equatorial Guinea but won’t leave people’

FORMER Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has been offered political asylum in Equatorial Guinea.

A leading weekly‚ The Standard‚ quoting sources‚ reported that Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo had paid a visit to his close friend Mugabe at his private residence‚ the Blue Roof in Borrowdale‚ where the offer had been made.

However‚ Mugabe is said to have warmly declined the offer.

“This is my home‚ I will die here,” he is reported to have said. “I will never abandon my people.”

The paper also reported that Mugabe had complained that his successor‚ President Emmerson Mnangagwa‚ was keeping a close watch on his movements.

Since stepping down after military intervention in November‚ Mugabe has spoken only once to the media and revealed that his family’s security was compromised.

Only pictures and videos of the former head of state have surfaced on social media‚ which have been posted by close family during celebrations such as his birthday. Mbasogo and Mugabe – at some point Africa’s longest serving leaders – cemented their friendship in 2004.

Zimbabwe arrested former British soldier and mercenary Simon Mann, who led a band of 69 soldiers en route to Equatorial Guinea to unseat Mbasogo in March 2004. Their plane was seized by Zimbabwe’s security forces when it landed in Harare to collect weapons.

In 2015, at the request of Mbasogo‚ Mugabe sent military experts to one of sub-Sahara’s leading oil producers.