We find Mugabe's long lost 'son'

We find Mugabe's long lost 'son'

HEY SON!: Mugabe's 'son' with his picture. Picture © Daily Sun
HEY DADDY!: Mugabe's 'son' with his picture. Picture © Daily Sun

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By Lebo Nkatazo

FOR many people, the discovery that they are Robert Mugabe’s long lost son would be something to take to the grave.

Not so for an unemployed 68-year-old South African man who declared this week: “Mugabe is my blood.”

Edward Motaung is so determined to be reunited with his “father” that he has approached a South African newspaper to help him in his quest.

“I need to see my blood father,” Motaung declared this week.

Aged 15, Motaung claims his mother Tontsho Motaung, now deceased, broke the news to him that the 84-year-old Zimbabwean strongman was his biological father.

“I did not go to school because my mother was a part-time domestic worker earning only petty cash,” Motaung said. “I am lost not knowing who I am because my mother did not tell me exactly what happened. She also failed to take me to Zimbabwe to see my father.”

Motaung was raised in a family of the Batswana tribe but insists he is not of Tswana blood. “I’m Shona,” he told the Daily Sun newspaper.

Once when he was sick, he remembers, his mother told him: “I cannot afford to take you to hospital, but your father is rich, wherever he is.”

Motaung now lives in the poor Alexandra Township of Johannesburg – a far cry from his “father’s” opulence.

Now he fears his poverty is a result of his failure to "reach my own blood, my ancestors".

FINDING MUGABE'S SON: Edward was born in what was called the Orange Free State in 1940. But Mugabe was not at Fort Hare University until the late 1940's

Not much is know about Mugabe’s childhood. But if the man’s claims are to be believed, he must have been 16 when he sired Motaung. Mugabe attended St Francis Xavier College in Kutama in his youth, and would have finished Standard Six aged about 13-15 years.

Mugabe was not at Fort Hare University for his first of seven degrees until the late 1940s – making it highly unlikely he would have come into contact with Motaung’s mother on South African soil.

It has long been rumoured that Mugabe has a daughter born out of wedlock with a Bulawayo woman. A UK Sunday newspaper once tracked the woman to Vancouver, Canada, but had difficulties proving it was Mugabe’s daughter.

At her wedding held at Bulawayo’s city hall, Mugabe is said to have sent his sister, Sabina, with presents.

Motaung’s story sounds implausible. It probably is, but his looks make him a prime candidate to be cast as Robert Mugabe in a future Hollywood blockbuster -- for they sure do lookalike!

We were unable to get the president's spokesman to respond to Motaung's claims.

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