Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe denied rumors that he died of heart failure last week, the official Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Speculation has been rife in the capital Harare that Mugabe was dead, after privately owned media reported he had checked into a local hospital for heart tests.
“President Mugabe yesterday scoffed at rumors doing rounds in Harare that he died last week after a heart failure,” the paper said on Tuesday, citing senior government officials who attended a briefing with the 81-year-old veteran leader.
“I told the president that he is reportedly dead from last week as a result of heart failure. He laughed and said: ’When did I die and where?’” the paper quoted Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba as saying.
Mugabe was “as fit as a teenager,” he added.
As one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, Mugabe’s health has been the subject of constant local and foreign media speculation over the past decade or so, but he has dismissed talk that it is failing.
Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has hinted he might retire when his current six-year presidential term expires in 2008.
The controversial leader denies critics’ charges that his mismanagement has damaged what was once one of Africa’s most promising economies. He accuses local and foreign opponents of sabotage in retaliation for his seizure of white-owned commercial farms for black Zimbabweans.
