Farm and fish at ‘Gracelands’
Unity Square, next to the Parliament building.
“If it wasn’t for Grace, we wouldn’t be in this shit. All along we expected better but since she came into Mugabe’s life she created trouble for our country,” says Lucy Mashumba.
Pent-up emotions spilled on to the streets of the capital and, although most were loath to blame their president for the failures of their country, they insulted the former first lady instead.
“To be honest, I thank her. Were it not for her, Mugabe would have remained till today. She stepped on everyone’s toes,” says trader Thulani Mangena.
Hands stretched out to touch the liberators, the men in uniform who had awoken the slumbering nation from their nightmare. The young Zimbabwe Defence Force soldiers reached down from their armoured vehicles, accepting the plaudits of the grateful masses.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, all that remained amid scattered bottles and rubbish were the armoured military vehicles.
At Manzou Farm, cupped between mountains covered in dense bush and trees, with smoke pouring out of her hut that acts as a kitchen, Gurure reflects on her own journey.
She was 14 years old when she left home and made her way to Mozambique to join the armed wing of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army.
“We are the owners of this land. We fought for it. Whoever comes next must fulfil the promises. This is the third Chimurenga,” she says.
She recalls the promise that liberation held — access to food, education and land — and how it was betrayed by corrupt politicians. “What we were promised is not what happened.”
Today Gurure is married and has four children. Her husband lives with his two other wives, near Mount Darwin. He visits occasionally for a few days at a time. “He comes, he does nothing, he goes back.”
For Gurure, her fate is intrinsically tied to the land. “There is nothing that gives life other than the land.
“I have a feeling that our lives will improve. They will see that what has happened to Mugabe will happen to them as well.”
Walking past the unmanned guardhouse and the silent compound that housed AK-47-wielding police, the inhabitants of Manzou Farm stroll down the tree-lined grove.
“I am going to swim from one side of the dam right to the other side. There, far,” Zengeni said, to chuckles of delight from the group.
In the midst of the collapse of her family’s power during the past week, a recent picture of Grace shows a demure woman, dressed conservatively in a long skirt and blouse, unwilling or unable to face the lens. In the past seven days, the former first lady has left the Mugabe’s Borrowdale Brooke mansion only once. With an escort of three soldiers, she visited Mazowe briefly, before returning to her home beside State House and her nonagenarian husband’s side.