‘Gaunt-looking’ Mugabe ‘flew to Dubai hospital’

South African president Jacob Zuma visits Harare today amid rumours that Robert Mugabe is far from well. According to the South African Times, the 85-year-old Zimbabwean leader flew with his wife to the United Arab Emirates last week and attended a hospital in Dubai on Sunday.

Mugabe was described as looking gaunt by fellow passengers on the Air Zimbabwe flight. It is thought that he was going to see Awang Kechik, his Malaysian urologist, about a long-standing prostate condition. His daughter, who has been living in Hong Kong, flew to Dubai to meet him.
 
Sources in Mugabe's Zanu-PF party said in his absence that they did not know where the president was, which was taken to mean that the matter was sensitive. Other members of the government, when quizzed about the reports, said that they were the inventions of "sick and evil minds". One told the Associated Press that Mugabe was not sick, but away on holiday.
 
What is certain is that Mugabe failed to turn up at the recent funeral of Senator Richard Hove, one of his comrades in the liberation struggle. He never usually misses these patriotic occasions.

Assuming Mugabe is well enough to receive Zuma today, it is unlikely to be the sort of cosy meeting he enjoyed with the South African's predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, who was notoriously tame in his dealings with the Harare regime.

It appears that Zuma intends taking a much tougher stance. Gwede Mantashe, secretary-general of South Africa's ruling ANC party, warned Zimbabwe that: "President Zuma will be more vocal in terms of what we see as deviant behaviour in our neighbours".

Alluding to a recent incident in which Zanu-PF politicians had walked out of a debate with members of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change, Mantashe said that Zimbabwe did not have the "luxury of adolescent behaviour. You must be more mature. You must engage." ·