via Mugabe blunders again – DailyNews Live 2 March 2015
HARARE – President Robert Mugabe made another embarassing gaffe at the weekend when he claimed that this year’s edition of the 21st February Movement held in Victoria Falls on Saturday had somehow coincided with his 21st birthday.
The clanger, the latest in a long line of other recent faux pas, left many attendees at his outrageously extravagant birthday bash red-faced.
Observers have said more than $1 million was blown up at the jamboree which was televised on ZTV all day and night on Saturday, at a time when the majority of Zimbabweans are wallowing in abject poverty.
“Once again, I thank you for the support, blessings, and gifts that you all bring as we come together to celebrate the 21st February Movement, which, this year, coincides with my 21st birthday,” Mugabe said at his party.
Medical experts said yesterday that his gaffes were normal for “a
91-year-old” — a time at which many people in that age bracket apparently suffer from serious dementia.
Mugabe sounded tired and sometimes somewhat disoriented in his televised interview with ZTV last week.
During Zanu PF’s disputed congress in December last year, he stunned the more than 12 000 delegates after he mistakenly denounced his party saying “pasi neZanu PF (down with Zanu PF)”.
This came after his 49-year-old wife Grace had ordered him off the podium, following which he also admitted that the First Lady often told him what to do, even at their plush Harare home.
“My wife has written a note; she says I’m talking too much. That’s how I am treated even at home, so I must listen,” he said before walking off the podium to much uneasiness among the gathered delegates.
A few weeks later, Mugabe was at it again, this time mistakenly referring to Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko as the new president as he was swearing him in, along with the other deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and 11 ministers at State House.
Just before the congress, Mugabe had suffered a serious lapse of concentration, damagingly blurting out that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had garnered 73 percent of the disputed 2008 presidential vote.
COMMENTS
Just curl up and DIE,PLEASE!!!
Mugabe no doubt is suffering from ancien dementia – and one wonders who really is running the country. My guess is it is Grace Mugabe and a few of her hangers-on.
In the case of sufferers of that problem – they remember nearly zero of the recent past and knows about what happened some time back. Mugabe remembers the 2008 election, hence his blurting out of the real election results in 2008. Otherwise he can remember something of the present if he has notes to keep him in check and he tells people religiously what he is told to tell them by Grace – but even then makes ghastly mistakes. That is why she also take up the chair next to him at the Zanu-PF meetings so as to keep him in check.
Another problem is the fact that Mugabe shows his age by falling asleep at cabinet meetings – sufferers often have problems with sleeping at night, but they routinely fall asleep during the day.
The problem is bound to get worse as he ages and rapidly so. One just have to think about Hastings Banda of Malawi to realize what is going on in the case of this type of problem.
A country with a sufferer like that is going to pieces – nothing will be solved by a crazy and greedy typist at present ruining the country.