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Harare Bureau
PUBLIC Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche remains in critical condition in hospital after he was admitted on Tuesday.

Cde Goche missed a meeting of Zanu-PF’s politburo on Wednesday — the last before next week’s Congress — together with Vice President Joice Mujuru who was also reportedly sick.

Cde Mujuru, however, was fit enough to attend the 2015 budget presentation in Parliament yesterday, taking a seat next to President Mugabe.

Cdes Mujuru and Goche were recently named as kingpins in an alleged plot to assassinate President Mugabe.

A member of the same faction, Cde Flora Buka, was also reported to have collapsed in Nemudziya after losing in the Central Committee elections held at Mutora Growth Point in Nembudziya on Monday.

Cde Goche is admitted at a private hospital in Harare. A doctor at the hospital yesterday said the minister was still in the Intensive Care Unit.

“He has stabilised, but he’s still in the woods,” the doctor, who cannot be named for professional reasons, said. “He’s still in the ICU but we’re monitoring him.”

Doctors refused to disclose his ailment but it is understood Cde Goche is suffering from hypertension.

Cde Goche is alleged to have, on September 7, told the Zimbabwe Sugar Cane Milling Union’s secretary-general Cde Edmore Hwarare that what was taking place in the sugar industry was not war as real war was coming in the run-up to the Zanu-PF congress when guns would be fired and people he didn’t mention would be “flushed down the toilet”. This was after Cde Hwarare had briefed him on the challenges they are facing in the sugar industry.

VP Mujuru is the patron of the Zimbabwe Sugar Cane Millers’ Union.

Cde Goche is also said to have made contingencies for the assassination of President Mugabe during his recent meetings with potential hitmen in South Africa and Israel.

He allegedly used the cover of official government business in Western Europe to make stops in Israel and South Africa to look for an assassin in pursuance of the plots which led to the suspension of Zanu-PF spokesperson Cde Rugare Gumbo.