SPECIAL REPORT
Mugabe's secret craving to live forever
Devastating newzimbabwe.com investigation shows Mugabe wants to rule
forever by keeping a young image
By Mduduzi Mathuthu | 04 July 2003
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe turns 80 next year but there is nothing that
distinguishes him from a 12-year old boy, except for his physical
stature. He is a man in denial who has married a woman 35 years his
junior and still claims to be an "old young man."
But there is something more disturbing about Mugabe's attempts to halt
time. At his age, he should have at least a patch of gray hair, just
like his nationalist colleagues from the African struggle against
colonialism in the middle of the last century - Nelson Mandela, the
late Walter Sisulu, Sam Nujoma and others.
But Mugabe has sought to defy nature by permanently keeping the barber
busy with constant dyeing of his hair to look younger. He has also
found love at a very late age with his former secretary, Grace Marufu,
and had his last child in the last decade.
With the aid of psychiatrists and hairdressers, a newzimbabwe.com
investigation this week sought to unravel the mind of Mugabe and
establish the source of his desire to create and keep a young image.
We found a man who is locked in a fear of death and craves to rule
forever.
"Indeed, that first sign of gray can be upsetting," Thomson Pritchard
a practising psychiatrist in South Wales said. "A coarse, unruly
strand that seems to have its own mind, it usually appears around
one's early 30s. The anxiety comes not from what it is, but what it
represents - the inevitable."
With his rule seemingly under threat from the opposition amid
converging international contempt for his administration, Pritchard
said it was important for Mugabe to maintain that image. He said it
mitigates against the full-blown perceptions of his critics who could
easily seize on his graying hair to caricature him as a man determined
to die in power.
In Africa gray hair will automatically translate to respect from the
younger generations. As in any other part of the world, it represents
the development of a man or woman into the last leg of the human life.
And true to the statement, Mugabe is today a man ridiculed even by
people whose knowledge of politics is as scarce as a trace of gray in
his hair. There is no obvious link here but the sheer fact that Mugabe
is a man on the verge of the end of his political career still walking
around with dark hair makes him a target for the satirists and
political opponents.
We took pictures of Mugabe to hairdressers some of which reveal a
strand of gray hair, which amazingly doesn't appear on his recent
photographs. This, the hairdressers said, showed Mugabe had tightened
his dyeing regime.
"There is definitely a sign that he is stricter with his appearance in
recent photographs than he was previously. He is inconsistent and I
think it's a pretty shoddy job if his desire is to keep it a secret,"
Joe Bryant, a hairdresser told this website.
Mugabe's hair was the interest of a recent article in the privately
owned weekly Zimbabwe Standard newspaper. Hidden deep inside a feature
on Walter Sisulu - the late South African freedom fighter - is a
devastating paragraph sure to send Mugabe's image makers into
depression. "What is it that the people of Zimbabwe will remember when
Mugabe dies? Let's make some comparisons; First the look; Sisulu was
90 years old. And it showed, at least in the gray hair. What is it
with our President and Palette hair dye? Is it some sort of denial of
the fact that he is actually close to 80? Is it to ward off old age?
We all want to look and feel good. But having a Michael Jacksonesque
identity crisis at that age and when one is a state President is
laughable."
Of course Mugabe is not the only politician who has been suspected of
or who is dyeing his hair. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took
time off the affairs of the state to clarify an all important detail -
the colour of his hair.
"The federal chancellor's temples/hair are not dyed," read a statement
sent to the DDP news agency by Mr Schroeder's lawyers early this year
after the agency claimed in a report the Chancellor was not exactly
looking the way he should. "Anyone who insinuates that I dye my hair
insinuates that I always lie," Mr Schroeder is reported to have said.
Another mystery recently was the first television appearance after the
end of the Gulf War by Iraqi's former information minister, Mohammed
Al Sahaf, whose dark hair has been replaced by short gray hair.
Although he was not asked to explain, experts said it could partly be
a result of stress.
This, experts told us this week, explains why Mugabe has got stricter
with his dyeing regime. "The problem is that he will now have to do it
more regularly because he appears to be ageing very fast partly
because of the stress the political situation is exerting on him,"
Bryant said.
With rumours circulating that Mugabe could be suffering from cancer,
another telling discovery was made by the University of Southern
California that analysed hair dying activity and bladder cancer. The
researchers note that the exposure of concern is to a family of
chemicals called Arylamines, an ingredient in many oxidative hair
dyes, which is a known risk factor for bladder cancer and found to
cause cancer in experimental animals.
No comment was immediately available from Mugabe's information
department by Thursday night as his secretary for information, George
Charamba was recovering from the shock of a horror car crash, while
Jonathan Moyo his information minister has consistently been
uncooperative.
.................Leslie
"zakanaka" <lala...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3fefa...@news1.mweb.co.za...
Get a wig, young man! It does wonders for you.
"Ron McGregor" <cit...@behindbars.com> wrote in message news:3ff07...@news1.mweb.co.za...