Grace’s son buys 2 cars for R7m
ZIMBABWE’S free-spending first family this week upped their lavish game when Russel Goreraza, Grace Mugabe’s first-born son from an earlier marriage, imported two luxury cars worth R7 million.
This has angered many poor families who struggle to put food on the table in a country battling rampant unemployment and worsening poverty.
Goreraza, 34,imported two Rolls-Royce Ghosts (2017) from Europe, estimated to cost $280 000 (R3.7m) each before import duties.
Zimbabwe’s former finance minister and opposition leader Tendai Biti expressed outrage.
“Nearly 80% of Zimbabweans are living in extreme poverty and we have this insane first family, the Mobutu Sese Seko’s of our time squandering taxpayers money on houses for Grace in South Africa and now Rolls-Royces for her son,” Biti said.
Biti said Goreraza, like Grace’s other sons, was unable to pass a single school leaving examination but via his mother’s position has established links in the mining industry and a “fantastic” lifestyle.
Goreraza is heard telling pals in a video that has gone viral that his next vehicle, due to arrive in Harare shortly, is an Aston Martin.
Biti questioned the logic of importing such luxury cars to navigate the treacherous Zimbabwe roads. “This family are toxic parasites. What is Russell going to do with his Rolls-Royces on the pot-holed roads around Harare?”
Outspoken Zanu-PF legislator Justice Mayor Wadyajena joined Biti in scorning big-spending Goreraza’s “pricey acquisitions”.
He tweeted a picture of the sleek Rolls-Royce with a caption: “Only the connected thrive in a country where youth are begging for opportunities to earn an honest living”.
Goreraza, born to Grace when she was married to Stanley Goreraza, has a fast-living reputation. Like his two younger brothers, Robert jr, 25, and Chatunga, 21, sons of President Robert Mugabe, he has a chequered reputation and was found guilty of culpable homicide after he ran over and killed a pedestrian in Harare in 2015.
He is a regular visitor to Johannesburg and stays in the Coronation Road, Sandhurst, mansion which his mother rents from an Angolan couple who now live in Portugal.
Around the corner, in Killarney Road, is the massive mansion Grace bought in May for more than R40m and which Russell signed for via a shelf company which owns it.
His half-brothers are supposed to live in this house, but have, in the past weeks, rented a flat for entertaining at 20 West Street, Sandton, where their mother allegedly beat up Gabrielle Engels, 20, last month.
There are about a dozen Zimbabwean security guards employed at Grace’s rented property. It is not clear if she pays for them or the government in Harare.
Goreraza has regularly applied for visas to visit the US but was again turned down this week, when the rest of the Mugabe family and 70 officials went to the UN General Assembly in the one remaining, ageing, but serviceable international aircraft owned by bankrupt Air Zimbabwe.
Grace’s lawyers from the Zimbabwe Embassy were at the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, yesterday in connection with charges that she injured Engels at her two younger sons’ rented apartment last month.
AfriForum hopes to have her diplomatic immunity over the alleged assault reversed.