{"id":8723,"date":"2012-04-12T08:44:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T08:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=8723"},"modified":"2012-04-12T08:44:22","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T08:44:22","slug":"mugabe-defies-illness-rumours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/12\/mugabe-defies-illness-rumours\/","title":{"rendered":"Mugabe defies illness rumours"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3330\" style=\"width: 244px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/350x.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3330\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3330\" title=\"Abdoulaye Wade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Robert Mugabe\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/350x.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"234\" height=\"173\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3330\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bingu and Mugabe: Two of a kind<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe returned home from Singapore today, appearing fit and defying reports that he was seriously ill.<\/p>\n<p>The 88-year-old leader bounded down the stairs of a chartered plane, accompanied by his wife and was met at Harare&#8217;s main airport by senior government officials, including his potential successor, vice president Joice Mujuru.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Mugabe did not speak to reporters and was taken away in his official presidential motorcade.Mugabe is one of Africa&#8217;s longest serving leaders and has ruled the former British colony in southern Africa since 1980. He is sharing power with political rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in a fragile coalition formed three years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, Zimbabwean officials denied reports Mugabe was seriously ill in Singapore, saying he is well and on holiday with his family.<\/p>\n<p>Chief spokesman for Mugabe\u2019s Zanu-PF party Rugare Gumbo told state television the reports were \u201clies meant to destabilise Zimbabwe\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some sick and malicious people are spreading false stories about him being seriously ill while others are saying he is dead or dying out there,\u201d one Zanu-PF official said.<\/p>\n<p>Mugabe has made frequent visits to Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, where medical care is far better than in his impoverished state. The 88-year-old president has been the subject of several health scares in recent years, with some reports saying he has prostate cancer, which he denies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe returned home from Singapore today, appearing fit and defying reports that he was seriously ill. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[911,1034,2032,396],"class_list":["post-8723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zimbabwe-2","tag-mugabe","tag-mutharika","tag-robert-mugabe","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}