Categories: Stories

Did Grace panic because Mugabe’s health is deteriorating?

First Lady Grace Mugabe may have piled pressure on her husband President Robert Mugabe to fire Emmerson Mnangagwa because she was afraid of her security under a Mnangagwa presidency because Mugabe’s health is deteriorating fast.

"The President's Malaysian urologist and Chinese doctors have informed the First Lady that the President is unlikely to live for too long from now due to mounting complications from his long-standing prostate cancer," New Zimbabwe.Com reported.

The news website which is based in London used to have close links to senior Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front members now in the G40 faction.

"The cocktail of medications that have been administered to Mugabe over a long period of time are having less and less positive impacts and the side effects of the cancer, such as fluid retention and decreased lung capacity are believed likely to cause organ failure progressively".

According to New Zimbabwe.Com, Grace Mugabe is said to have urged Mugabe at the weekend "to seize the moment and make the long-awaited strike against Mnangagwa before the VP had time to do the same to her and the children”.

A syndicated columnist said the First Lady had Mnangagwa fired to protect herself and her children and used the same argument to get Mujuru fired.

Gwynne Dyer wrote that before getting rid of Mujuru, Grace Mugabe said: : “She has been telling people that once Mugabe is gone . . . she will drag me in the streets, with people laughing while my flesh sticks to the tarmac.”

He says Grace used the same trick on Mnangagwa but adds that if Mugabe dies Grace will be president for a week or two because she has made so many enemies.

“Once he dies, she will be lucky to get out alive,” he says.

 Reports about Mugabe’s impending death have been doing the rounds for almost a decade now.

Former Central Bank governor Gideon Gono said way back in 2008 that doctors had given Mugabe two more years to live, but he is alive up to this day.

Mugabe himself said at his 88th birthday: “The day will come when I will become sick. As of now I am fit as a fiddle. I have died  many times. That’s where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once. I have died and resurrected and I don’t know how many times I will die and resurrect.”

He even wondered at the funeral of his sister Bridget in 2014 why he had lived this long when all his siblings have died.

“Bridget is gone, not because we could not take care of her but because her time was up. People should therefore not question why I am still alive when all others are going.  I don’t know why I have lived this long while all others are gone, it is God’s plan,” he said.

 

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This post was last modified on November 10, 2017 8:27 am

Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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