Grace claims to be victim, says model attacked her with a knife
ZIMBABWE’S first lady, Grace Mugabe, has denied assaulting model Gabriella Engels with an electric cable in a Johannesburg hotel suite last month, alleging that an intoxicated and unhinged Engels attacked her with a knife.
In a previously unreported August 17 statement, Mugabe countered 20-year-old Engels’s version, portraying herself as the victim after intervening on behalf of her adult sons, Chatunga and Robert Junior, who were “in trouble with a drunken young woman”.
The statement said Mugabe, 52, was thinking about filing attempted murder charges.
However, a group representing Engels dismissed the allegations as lies.
According to the model, an irate Mugabe burst into the room where she was waiting with two friends to meet Chatunga on August 13 and started laying into her with an electric cable.
Photographs taken by Engels’s mother soon after the incident showed gashes to the model’s head. She also had bruising on her thighs.
In her statement, Mugabe dismissed Engels’s version as malicious allegations.
“She was worried about her sons and went to see them at their hotel suite,” the statement said.
“On her arrival, Ms Engels attacked Dr Grace Mugabe with a knife after she was asked to leave the hotel.
“Security was left with no other option but to remove Ms Engels from the hotel suite.”
The statement also alleged that Engels had been in a fight with other women at Johannesburg’s Taboo nightclub the previous evening and suggested that may have been the cause of her injuries.
Acting on behalf of Engels, Afriforum denied both accusations.
“Gabriella never attacked Grace Mugabe in any way and she did not participate in the fight at Taboo,” it said.
“It is clear that Grace Mugabe is desperately trying to escape responsibility for her own violent behaviour by using lies to falsely portray the victim in this case as the perpetrator.”
South Africa granted Mugabe diplomatic immunity, allowing her to evade immediate prosecution for assault, although Engels and Afriforum have challenged that decision, saying she was not in South Africa on official business.
According to Zimbabwean intelligence files, Robert Mugabe lobbied his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, to have the issue solved amicably and out of court, but was stymied by Engels’s refusal to accept a settlement.