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Mugabe back in Zimbabwe after annual holidays
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has returned from his annual month-long holiday and returned to work last Saturday, dispelling rumours that he had collapsed and died in Asia.
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The AFP news agency quotes Zimbabwean state newspaper, The Herald, as having reported that Mugabe, who turns 92 next month, met Equatorial Guinea's President Theodore Obiang Nguema for over three hours on Saturday in Harare.
"President Mugabe and the First Lady Grace Mugabe arrived home last night (Friday), quashing false media reports that (he) had suffered a heart attack while on his annual leave in the Far East," The Herald said.
Harare last week denied rumours that Mugabe, the world's oldest national leader, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, had collapsed and died while on holiday.
Despite his age, Mugabe continues to give long speeches in public, but speculation over his health grew last year when he tripped and fell down some steps at a televised ceremony.
He also read a speech to parliament in September apparently unaware that he had delivered the same address a month earlier.
WikiLeaks released a 2008 US diplomatic cable in 2011 saying that Mugabe was reported to have prostate cancer and had less than five years to live.
After meeting in Harare, Mugabe and Nguema told reporters they had discussed relations between their countries as well as security and terrorism in Africa.
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While Mugabe refused to answer questions about his holiday, he told reporters they should "report (on) us (African leaders) better than they have been doing all along".
Before his country’s independence, President Mugabe was among many African freedom fighters who came to Ghana under the first republic in the early 1960s.
While in Ghana, he taught at the St Mary’s Training College (now St Mary’s Boys Senior High School) at Apowa, near Takoradi, before returning to his country to lead the struggle which culminated in independence in 1980.