Mugabe’s greatest folly
Gucci Grace’s insatiable appetite for luxury and mega spending sprees were copied by bling-smitten young son
HOW has the downfall of Robert Mugabe – at 93, the world’s longest-serving leader and the only one Zimbabwe has known since its independence in 1980 – finally come to pass?
Thanks to his wife, 41 years his junior and known in the country as “Gucci Grace” and “the First Shopper”, she has been his Lady Macbeth, spending extravagantly, ruthlessly trampling on adversaries, and fixated with power.
Grace came from humble origins, born in South Africa to Zimbabwean migrant working parents and raised in the farming town of Chivu, where she was educated at a missionary school before going to secretarial college. But things soon changed. Mugabe married his second wife in a lavish wedding attended by Nelson Mandela and, for a while, she played the role of quiescent wife, busying herself with some serious kleptocratic wealth accumulation – something the fairly frugal Mugabe hadn’t been known for.
She set about organising the construction of a huge presidential villa in 2003, at a then estimated expense of R112 795 800. Set in 1.2 hectares, and believed to include 25 bedrooms and multiple spas, Zimbabweans dubbed it Graceland.
She went on frequent shopping trips abroad, especially Singapore, where her husband went for medical treatment, or to New York for the UN General Assembly, returning with trunks of bling.
On one visit to Paris, she was reported to have spent R1.07-million in its designer stores.
Before 2002, when the couple were banned from travelling to Europe due to human rights violations, her favourite destination was London and her favourite shop Harrods.
After one trip, where she stayed in a suite at Claridges, she was asked how she could justify spending so much on designer shoes while people starved.
“I have very narrow feet, so I can only wear Ferragamo,” she said.
When her husband launched his takeover of white-owned commercial farms in 2000, Grace seized some prize properties in the lush countryside of Mazowe, near Harare. There, she built a state-ofthe-art dairy and a private game reserve.
In 2007, she reportedly finalised building work on a second palatial mansion, at a cost of R376-million.
But still she stayed mostly in her husband’s shadow. It was only as he began to sink into his dotage that her political ambitions stirred.
He had dominated the ruling Zanu-PF for so long it had morphed into a personality cult, one he ruled as his personal fiefdom. And, as is so often the case with autocrats, he couldn’t bear to make plans for his own succession, as this would entail contemplating his own mortality.
With no clear successor, Grace began to eye the top job. How better to assure the family’s status than to keep the seat at the head of the table? It’s a path well worn by political spouses – Evita, Imelda Marcos, Madam Mao. Why not Comrade Grace?
She bears little resemblance to his first wife, the much-loved Sally, a Ghanaian who was dubbed “Amai” (mother).
Mugabe first noticed Grace as he strolled through the typing pool at State House – both were married at the time, though Sally was ill.
Grace was then wed to a Zimbabwean air force officer, Stanley Goreraza, whom Mugabe sent off to China as defence attaché.
Mugabe fathered two children with his mistress, which was kept secret from the people of Zimbabwe, before his wife died in 1992, and a third afterwards.
With Sally out of the way, the pair married.
There was a problem with Grace’s intended ascension to the throne, however: she was too young to have played a role in the war for independence, so she had no liberation credentials (Sally had been an active campaigner for the release of political prisoners).
Grace thought that her status as Robert Mugabe’s wife would trump this. To make herself more substantial a figure, in 2014 she achieved what must be the world’s fastest PhD, in just two months, from the University of Zimbabwe.
She was not required to defend her thesis, which is mysteriously unavailable in the university’s library.
But her instant doctorate wasn’t enough to fix her other image problem – her temper.
She recently bought a 100 karat diamond ring for her husband worth R20-million, but is now suing the Lebanese dealer who sold it to her, claiming the ring was substandard. The dealer had to flee her wrath.
In Hong Kong, she famously assaulted a journalist who was following her on a visit there.
Her spoiled progeny have only exacerbated her image problem: her sons have been living the high life in the posh northern suburbs of Johannesburg, hanging out with their entourages at expensive nightclubs, drinking top-shelf champagne. They often boast of their lavish lives on Instagram – one, Bellarmine, last week posted a picture of his new watch with the caption “$60 000 on the wrist when your daddy run the whole country ya know!!!”, later uploading a video to Snapchat of himself pouring champagne over the band.
A little over three months ago, when 52-year-old Grace visited her sons in a Johannesburg hotel, she flew into a rage upon finding them entertaining a young model. With her bodyguards looking on, Grace thrashed the girl with an extension cord, cutting her face so badly that the she needed stitches.
Facing assault charges, and to avoid a major international incident, she had to be hustled out of South Africa under diplomatic immunity.
In the meantime, she had parachuted her way to the top of the party, seeing off the vicepresident, Joice Mujuru, whom she got her husband to fire, allegedly for plotting to overthrow him.
She then ascended to the head of ZanuPF Women’s League, touring the country in a vehicle emblazoned with her own face.
Her husband has, for some time, been on his last legs – throughout this year, photos have appeared of him nodding off in meetings and at rallies. When he last spoke at the UN his legs were so unsteady he had to hold on to chair backs on his way to the podium.
To others in the ruling party it seemed that Grace was in control and determined to succeed him. Her last remaining obstacle was the other vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been Mugabe’s intelligence chief during the war for independence.
When she was heckled at a public rally at the beginning of this month by a few of his supporters, she went ballistic, publicly accusing him of plotting a coup.
Mnangagwa then accused Grace’s faction of trying to kill him earlier with a poisoned ice cream. He had vomited copiously and had to be airlifted to South Africa for treatment.
By his return, Grace had co-opted her husband to join in the attacks.
Last week, Mnangagwa was fired and ousted from the party, and had to flee in fear of his life.
But Grace had failed to secure the support of the army. Whatever transition arrangement is negotiated for Robert Mugabe’s political demise, the humiliation of his wife is now complete.
It was her fatal overreach that brought the end upon him.
Peter Godwin is the author of “The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe”