Zim’s hardline first lady: Shy young typist’s fall from grace

HARARE: The spectacular rise and fall of Zimbabwe’s uncompromising first lady, Grace Mugabe, had an unusual beginning – an office affair.

In the early 1990s 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.

Mugabe is trying to cling to power after the military took over this week in response to his purge of former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, a liberation war fighter and Grace’s sworn enemy.

Mnangagwa’s aides 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 ral- lies 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 corrup- tion and volatile temper, Grace does not have the liberation credentials the military believe are required to be a Zimbabwean leader.

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.”

President Mugabe’s wife, Sally, was desperately ill and died in 1992. Grace and Robert were married in 1996 and have three children.

“They say I want to be president. Why not? Am I not a Zimbabwean?” Grace said at a recent rally. – Reuters