Own Correspondent| Vice President Constantino Chiwenga and his wife, Mary flew back into Harare on Friday, but both remain ill, it has emerged.

Chiwenga was in India for medical checkups together with his wife, and has been out of work for nearly 6 weeks to date.

Flight tracking data confirm that Chiwenga’s privately hired jet landed in Harare on the 30th May just after 9am.

A Gulfstream 450 jet was hired from a company in Angola to fly Chiwenga to India. “It is one of the best chartered jets in the world and can fly up to 16 hours at a stretch. The aircraft was parked at the Delhi airport …” said a Delhi airport official requesting anonymity.

Before flying out of Zimbabwe for India, ambulances (for 3 weeks) took several routine trips to Chiwenga’s residence to attend to him. He then flew to India.

While it was not clear what his wife, Mary is suffering from, Chiwenga upon being admitted to Gurugram’s Medanta Hospital last month, was said to be “suffering from a severe obstruction of the food pipe because of which he was not able to have anything, not even liquids. He was being treated back in his country but it had not helped much,” as said by the Medanta Institute of Digestive and Hepatobiliary Sciences’ chairman, Dr Randhir Sud, who treated Chiwenga. “He is much better now; stable and eating on his own. We will keep him for 2-3 more days before deciding on the discharge,” he added.

But as he touched down last week, the former army general and his wife were found to be visually unwell, to the extent that a source described the wife (Mary) saying, “had she been well, she would have worked hard to get (Emmerson) Mnangagwa removed the same way she did (the former president) Mugabe.”

The development has led to further buttress revelations that Emmerson Mnangagwa is facing internal (rising) pressure to resign following the ongoing economic meltdown which has seen the price of petrol souring above USD7 per litre.

Meanwhile, speaking to ZimEye Monday morning, an impeccable source said, “pane zvirikuitika – things are happening inside,” without disclosing further. ZimEye is following up on this investigation.

It was suggested that Chiwenga’s wife, Mary could soon play the same role she played to influence her husband against former President Robert Mugabe in November 2017. However a family source close to Chiwenga cast doubts saying they do not believe there is much Chiwenga can do since both husband and wife are struggling for health at present.

“There is very little if anything they can do because they are all ill,” they said.

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