Harare, Aug 26 (DPA) President Robert Mugabe has returned home from “a private visit” to Dubai, government officials said Wednesday, contrary to reports that he was undergoing treatment there.
An official who requested anonymity said Mugabe had returned home Tuesday evening in the Air Zimbabwe plane that flew him there last Wednesday.

Earlier, Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa said: “As far as I know, he is well, unless it is a minor ailment like flu which might have happened while he was away.” Of reports in the South African Press that he had been admitted to hospital in the Gulf emirate, he said, “We are reading it in the newspapers”.

Official spokesman George Charamba was not available for comment.

Mugabe was not present at a meeting of his former ruling ZANU(PF) party’s central committee Wednesday, but officials pointed out he had not been at the two previous meetings of the body either.

There was no explanation in the state media Wednesday for his failure to speak at the burial of ZANU(PF) politburo member Richard Hove on Tuesday.

Mugabe is due to host South African president Jacob Zuma here Thursday for the opening of the Harare Agricultural Show. Zuma had promised to raise “very weighty issues” with Mugabe over the troubled coalition government he shares with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Early this month Tsvangirai met with Zuma in Pretoria where he asked the South African leader to press Mugabe on issues relating to the formation of a coalition government six months ago.

These include the unilateral appointment of ZANU(PF) cronies as central bank chief and attorney general, Mugabe’s refusal to swear in popular white MDC treasurer Roy Bennett, and a wave of prosecutions of MDC parliamentarians on what the party says are “trumped-up” charges.

The government sources said Mugabe returned last Wednesday from an official visit to Namibia and left immediately for Dubai.