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Mugabe: ‘I do fall often at home’

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PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has revealed how he has fallen several times at his Borrowdale home, adding that his tumble at Harare International Airport last month was nothing new.

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has revealed how he has fallen several times at his Borrowdale home, adding that his tumble at Harare International Airport last month was nothing new.

BY MOSES MATENGA

This has confirmed several reports of him falling many times at home and elsewhere despite that his officials have tried to defend him as they try to portray the 91-year-old veteran leader as still “fit as a fiddle”.

Several leaked stories have made headlines stating that Mugabe had fallen from his Borrowdale mansion with his officials denying the reports until he confirmed this himself on Thursday during an interview with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation to mark his 91st birthday.

Mugabe also revealed how former Vice-President Joice Mujuru allegedly wanted to kill him together with First Lady Grace Mugabe and Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa after hiring Nigerian sorcerers to do the job.

The version was different from the one he gave last year of the Mujuru faction using local witchdoctors and river beetles to try to kill him.

“Just that slight fall, missing a step — I have fallen many times in the house,” Mugabe said.

“Your foot is held by a carpet which is misplaced, you stumble. I am yet to come across to a person who has not fallen. I don’t see the reason why anyone should be surprised that a person has fallen. Then he does not live in this world. So I do not see the reason why anyone should say the President has fallen. It was a slight fall, missing a step,” Mugabe said while downplaying his fall that many attributed to ill-health and/or old age.

Mugabe said Mujuru and her allies wanted him dead, but gave a different version from what he said last year.

In the interview, Mugabe said Mujuru hired Nigerians who beheaded three chickens representing himself, Grace and Mnangagwa to cast a spell on them to die.

Last year he alleged that former Zanu PF Mashonaland East provincial chairman Ray Kaukonde sought for the services of a sangoma and had river beetles, one representing Mugabe and the other one Mujuru, to perform rituals as part of a plot to wrestle power from him.

“Others were plotting evil. Such ambitions . . . if that can’t happen, they use other means, let’s get the President out of the way, so they even wanted to shoot the President,” Mugabe said last year.

“One of the n’angas said look for two river beetles of different colours. One should be named Mugabe and the other should be called Mujuru and put them in water. That’s what happened. They were made to fight and if Mugabe’s beetle dies, then she will rule. How, if mine won against yours? . . . It seems that is what happened then,” Mugabe added then.

But in the interview, Mugabe said: “There is still lots of it (factionalism). There was the Mujuru faction and that of Minister Mnangagwa, when he was still minister. Those from Minister Mnangagwa did not show their desire to take down President Mugabe, but from this woman, went to Nigerian n’angas who killed chicken saying ‘this one is Mugabe, he is dead, this one is his wife and this one is Mnangagwa’. Those were magicians who were paid for all that nonsense.

“They thought I don’t also pray to God. I also go to church to pray for health and also peace, not those who want to kill. There are others who want power. There is also this elder one from Makoni (in obvious reference to expelled former Zanu PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa) who drags his feet just like me. We hear they want to establish a party, well and good. They want to call it Zanu Patriotic First. That nonsense. Even the courts will throw that away,” Mugabe said.