HARARE – The fate of 30 members of the Presidential Guard is unknown after a laptop belonging to President Robert Mugabe was stolen from one of his many safe houses in Harare, we can exclusively reveal.
Serving members of the Presidential Guard, a crack unit responsible for providing security to the ageing dictator said the soldiers, who were among those providing guard duties on the day in question, had been arrested by members of the military intelligence and military police while their fate was not known.
“There is a lot of panic among senior intelligence officers because if the laptop finds its way into the public arena, it might expose a lot about the goings on at State House.
Mugabe was reportedly so furious at the loss of his beloved laptop that homes of the suspects and those of their friends and relatives, including business premises, were raided and ransacked to no avail.
A relative of one of the suspects said family, friends and relatives had already lost hope of ever seeing them alive.
“The soldiers are just being blamed for something that they did not do. When on guard duties they have no time to be stealing such things. It is those who hang around the President such as his close security details who are so familiar with him who could have stolen the laptop,” a tearful relative said.
Mugabe was particularly enraged by the theft as it happened while he was in the process of analysing reports of the Zanu (PF) restructuring exercise and preliminary reports of the voter registration statistics, sources close to the presidential entourage revealed.
Security officers said the soldiers had been locked up or killed as the theft was regarded as one of the major security breaches, which could expose Mugabe’s public and private life.
Already, the theft of the laptop has brought into the open the fact that Mugabe does not reside at State House or his palatial Borrowdale mansion.
 senior official in the army said Mugabe, who is paranoid about being stormed by British and US soldiers, had come up with elaborate security plans which had seen him maintain appearances of living at the Borrowdale mansion.
“People just don’t know it but Mugabe moves from one safe house to another. The noisy motorcades are usually decoys, Mugabe now uses shorter, quieter convoys except when appearing at official engagements. At one time, the cat was let out of the bag when the official motorcade arrived at the Zanu (PF) Headquarters long after Mugabe had arrived in one of his more discreet convoys.” – Own correspondent
Post published in: News