Mugabe can no longer walk, says Mnangagwa

HARARE: Former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe has been receiving medical treatment in Singapore for two months and is no longer able to walk, although he should return home this week, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has revealed.

Mugabe, 94, who ruled the nation for nearly four decades since independence from Britain in 1980, was forced to resign in November 2017 after an army coup.

Mnangagwa told ruling Zanu-PF supporters at a rally in Murombedzi, Mugabe’s village about 100km west of the capital Harare, his predecessor had been due to return on October 15, but that his poor health had delayed the journey.

He did not say what treatment Mugabe had been undergoing.

“We have just received a message that he is better now and will return on November 30. He can no longer walk but we will continue to take care of him,” Mnangagwa said, referring to Mugabe by his totem name Gushungo.

During his later years in power Mugabe made several medical trips to Singapore.

Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent reports by private local media that he had prostate cancer.

Mnangagwa, who won a disputed July 30 presidential vote, repeated the army’s previous justification for last year’s coup, saying Mugabe, his former mentor, had been surrounded by criminals.

When the army rolled its tanks into Harare, military leaders said they were targeting “criminals around the president”. A bitter Mugabe said later, however, that the army’s action had forced him to resign.

Mugabe has been praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle and accused of being responsible for economic mismanagement, widespread corruption, anti-white racism and crimes against humanity.