The spectacular rise and fall of
Zimbabwe’s uncompromising First Lady, Grace Mugabe, had an unusual beginning:
an office affair.
It was the early 1990s when President Robert
Mugabe’s eye fell upon one of his shy young typists.
She would become his wife, a ferociously
ambitious politician and, more than two decades later, a contributor to the
downfall of her 93-year-old husband.
President Mugabe is trying to cling to power
after the military took over this week in response to his purge of vice
president Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, a liberation war fighter and Grace’s sworn
enemy.
Mnangagwa’s aides even accused her of trying
to poison him with ice cream from her dairy farm this year. She denies this.
Grace, now 52 and under house arrest in
Harare, had been calling for Mnangagwa’s removal for weeks as the two fought an
increasingly bitter winner-takes-all contest to succeed the man who has led
Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980.
It wasn’t the first time Grace had wielded
influence over her husband. When it appeared former vice president Joice Majuru
was in line to succeed Mugabe in 2014, he fired her following public rallies at
which Grace derided Majuru. This time she appears to have gone too far.
The purge of Mnangagwa and many of his
comrades irked the military, who had no intention of allowing Grace and her
youthful Generation 40 (G40) faction of the ruling ZANU-PF to take over the political reins.
Deeply unpopular among much of the Zimbabwean
public due to her alleged corruption and volatile temper, Grace does not have
the liberation credentials the military believe are required to be a Zimbabwean
ruler.
The lavish lifestyle that earned her the
nickname “Gucci Grace” and the political ambition that almost propelled her to
the presidency were not evident when she met her future husband.
“He just started talking to me, asking me
about my life,” she told a South African journalist in 2013. “I didn’t know it
was leading somewhere. I was quite a shy person, very shy.”
At the time, they were both married. President
Mugabe’s wife, Sally, was desperately ill and died in 1992. Grace and Robert
were married in 1996 and have three children.
“DIS-GRACE”
At first Grace stayed out of politics and was
better known for her spending habits, including buying mansions in South
Africa, rare diamond jewellery, and Rolls-Royce limousines for her playboy
sons.
Then there are the repeated allegations of
violence.
In Singapore in 2009, photographer Richard
Jones says Grace flew into a rage when he tried to take her picture. She
ordered her bodyguards to hold his arms back while she punched him repeatedly
in the face. Grace denies the assault.
In August this year, Grace was accused of
beating a young South African model who was partying with her sons.
According to Gabriella Engels, Grace burst
into a hotel room where she was talking with friends and whipped her with an
electric cable as bodyguards looked on.
Grace says she acted in self-defence after
Engels tried to stab her with a knife.
The reports of lavish spending and explosive
temper earned her the title “Dis-Grace” back home in Zimbabwe, where an
economic crisis had left most of the 16 million population mired in poverty and
unemployment.
Zimbabweans also question Grace’s credentials.
Eyebrows were raised in 2014 when she gained a PhD in three months. Her thesis,
on the changing role of the family, has never been published.
This hasn’t stopped her trying to reach the
political summit.
When Majuru was removed, Grace became head of
the ZANU-PF Women’s League,
giving her a seat at the party’s top table.
She used her political platform to take on
Mnangagwa and his allies and made a push to succeed her frail husband.
“They say I want to be president. Why not? Am
I not a Zimbabwean?” Grace said at a recent rally.(Reuters, AfricaNews)
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