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HARARE (Reuters) - When Zimbabwe’s rich and powerful get sick, they often go abroad in search of the best treatment money can buy; ousted President Robert Mugabe died in a hospital in Singapore in 2019.
With travel curtailed by the coronavirus, that luxury is not available, exposing the elite to a truth the majority has long known: Zimbabwe’s health system has been crumbling for years and is now struggling to cope with a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Anger among overwhelmed medics is adding to broader public dissatisfaction with President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who pledged an economic revival after he took over from Mugabe following a coup in 2017.
As Covid creeps across Africa, ageing officials drop off suddenly
Having underfunded their public hospitals for years and without access to clinics abroad, the continent s leaders are easy prey to the virus
2 February 2021 • 4:30pm
The funeral of Burundi s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, thought to be the first world leader to die of Covid
Credit: Tchandrou Nitanga/AFP
Thanks to its young and mainly rural population, Africa has avoided the catastrophic coronavirus death tolls seen in the West.
But as the virus silently creeps across the continent, ageing government ministers, officials and social elites in some African countries seem to be succumbing to Covid-19 at an alarming rate.
Aljazeera
ON January 20, Zimbabweans were shocked to hear the news of the death of Foreign Affairs Minister Sibusiso Moyo, the latest government official to succumb to Covid-19.
The 61-year-old, who rose to fame after appearing on state television on November 15, 2017, to announce the military coup that overthrew longtime President Robert Mugabe, died at a private hospital in the capital, Harare, days after testing positive for coronavirus.
Moyo was the third cabinet minister to have died of Covid-19 in recent weeks amid a major surge in the pandemic (Transport Minister Joel Biggie Matiza and Manicaland Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Ellen Gwaradzimba were the other two) and the fourth in total (Agriculture Minister Perrance Shiri passed away in July).