Mugabe alive and well,says his spokesman George Charamba

The Zimbabwean government has dismissed a false report by an
online publication, ZimEye,that President Mugabe collapsed and died while in thenFar East where he is on his annual leave. 

The website published thenstory under the headline:“Rumour rips CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) thatnMugabe has collapsed”. Presidential spokesperson andnpermanent secretary in the Zimbabwean Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Mr George Charamba said the false rumours about President Mugabe’s alleged death had become a usual chorus everyJanuary whenever he is on his annual leave which is heavily criticized by Zimbabwean opposition parties.

 “You can doubt that there can be a New Year, but you cannot doubt that there will be a storybon the President’s alleged death every January,” he said. “This is the way the website seeks to improve its hits in order to get dirty money from Google.

 There is a financial incentive to the grim lie. “Government is exploring
mechanisms for dealing with such extra territorial mischief.
These websites ride on carriers,don’t they?” Some people picked the hoax
that first appeared on the ZimEye website and started circulating it on social media. The ZimEye website that is known for fabricating stories,published the story under the pretext of a letter to the editor by one of their readers. Online media reports yesterday claimed that a South African radio station also picked up thebfalse story and ran it before retracting it and apologising.