Also on board the flight was recent graduate, Grace Mugabe – Dr Grace we should say – and lastborn, Chatunga, whose presence in NY is as relevant as a fifth wheel on a car. If we are to believe Mugabe’s repeated claims of good health – ‘fit as a fiddle’ – one cannot imagine the point of including Dr Grace on such a trip. Even more baffling is Mugabe’s need to drag his teenage son along on every overseas trip.
State media has made no effort to reveal the President’s travelling costs, which is rather strange as the head of state is in fact an employee of the people. Picture, if you will, the PR manager of a company, spending the employer’s money without troubling to disclose expenditure.
Whether the cost is one dollar or one million dollars, it is money that the overtaxed populace cannot afford.
One wonders what exactly Chatunga will do with himself to pass time, while daddy addresses the UN summit (read hurls insults at the hosts). Perhaps the party boy Chatunga will take a bite out of the Big Apple and hit the night spots, as his reputation suggests.
By day he may tag along when Grace heads for the shopping malls, where he might toss a new Playstation into the trolley, among the First Lady’s Gucci handbags. ‘Charge it to the people of Zimbabwe, they’ll pay!’
In November 2013, President Robert Mugabe lambasted his cabinet ministers for wasting time on tours and meetings. Ten months is a long time for a forgetful 90-year-old. Perhaps he has forgotten.
“We have got to start work, travel less, meet less and more action, more action, more action and that’s Zanu (PF). Otherwise people will say to us, you said you were going to fulfil these pledges, you are not fulfilling them,” he said.
Post published in: Analysis