Mrs Mugabe vanishes after alleged attack on South African model
Police admit they do not know if wife of Zimbabwe’s president is in Harare or Johannesburg
MYSTERY surrounded the whereabouts of Grace Mugabe yesterday following an alleged assault on a South African model.
It was initially thought she may have returned to Zimbabwe but some reports suggested she had gone to a rented home in Johannesburg.
The South African minister for police indicated Mrs Mugabe, 52, was due to appear at Randburg magistrates’ court in the city after she was accused of launching a vicious attack on Gabriella Engels, 20, at a party in a Johannesburg hotel on Sunday night.
But court staff said they did not receive papers with charges and police later admitted they were unsure of Mrs Mugabe’s location and could not confirm if she was even in the country.
“She hasn’t handed herself over yet. We do not know her whereabouts at this stage,” Vishnu Naidoo, a police national spokesman, told reporters.
“As long as we don’t have a suspect in custody, we cannot say when they will appear in court.”
Earlier in the day Fikile Mbalula, South Africa’s police minister, had said Mrs Mugabe was not arrested because she “cooperated and handed herself over to the police”.
Yesterday, officers were still negotiating with Mrs Mugabe’s lawyers as reports emerged that the wife of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, may even have returned to Harare.
“Yes, she is back in the country. We don’t know where this issue of assault charges is coming from,” a senior Zimbabwean government official told Reuters.
The Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s main opposition party, said it would demand an inquiry into how Mrs Mugabe was able to leave the country – if she had – and whether Mr Mbalula had “aided and abetted” her.
The apparent vanishing act came as further details emerged of the alleged assault on Sunday night.
Debbie Engels, Gabriella’s mother, told The Daily Telegraph her daughter was still “very upset”.
She said: “How do we know there will be justice in this case when she (Grace Mugabe) is powerful and we are just ordinary people?”
Mrs Engels claimed her daughter only managed to escape even more serious injuries because she was rescued by a man at the hotel where Mrs Mugabe’s sons, Robert Jnr and Chatunga Bellarmine, 21, rent rooms.
“There were about 10 or 12 guards there, with that woman, (Mrs Mugabe) at that time. It was dark, my daughter told me. They did nothing to help her when that woman was attacking my daughter,” she said.
Gabriella Engels has claimed she had no idea at the time that the “powerful woman” who attacked her was Mrs Mugabe. She only found out from an assistant at the hotel who helped her.
“I had no clue who this woman was when she started beating me,” said Ms Engels, who has had 14 stitches put into two head wounds.
She said she had not wanted to press charges against Mrs Mugabe but was persuaded to do so by her mother.
“These people are dangerous, and I was scared,” she told local radio station, 702.
Mrs Mugabe, who had only recently returned home after undergoing medical treatment in Johannesburg, had arrived back in South Africa hours before the alleged assault.
She reportedly insisted several passengers were thrown off a South African Airways flight from Harare to Johannesburg earlier in the day. She found her sons in the company of several young people, including Miss Engels, in hotel rooms she apparently did not know they had rented.
Contradictory reports, one that Mrs Mugabe had returned to Harare by private aircraft, the other that she was staying at a rented property in Johannesburg, could not be confirmed last night.
Police said no arrest warrant had been issued for Mrs Mugabe, meaning she may not have broken the law even if she had left the country.