Unlike his countrymen who have fled into situations of grim discomfort, Robert Mugabe this year alone spent more than 150 days in Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore – paid for by Zimbabwe’s taxpayers. The minimum daily cost for his care was anThe current vice president, Constantino Chiwenga, an army general under Mugabe and a leader of the anti-Mugabe coup, has also been on a three-country “tour” for his ongoing healthcare needs since April 2019.
At independence, Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party inherited a segregated but functional welfare system. In the 1980s the ruling party extended free health care access for children and the elderly in rural areas. With funding from the World Bank and the UN, it built local clinics and major hospitals in smaller towns – but such projects have long since ceased.
In 2014, the state-owned newspaper broke a story implicating the then-director of national insurance in a salary scandal. The largest medical organisation, PSMAS, had an annual revenue of US$72-million. The director was paying himself Mugabe’s failure to invest in healthcare, combined with deteriorating economic and political conditions, led to the forced migration of thousands of healthcare professionals.
Time for Africa to stop funding circus governments MYANC .