MAY 2017 61
»T
he sense of gloom is
everywhere in Zimbabwe’s
down-at-heel capital,
Harare. Partly because the
street lights don’t work
and a fuel shortage keeps cars off the
road and even candles are running
out. Yet one grand residence is all
a-twinkle, with illuminated palms
swaying in its tropical gardens and
chandeliers glinting off the elegant
hostess’ diamonds.
Grace Mugabe, second wife of the
country’s 93-year-old President, loves
to entertain in the house derisively
known as “Graceland” – built at a cost
of millions of dollars, set in 16 hectares
of grounds and featuring such everyday
necessities as a thermostatically
controlled chiller cabinet for the First
Lady’s favourite Godiva chocolates.
Assorted flatterers and freeloaders
have been coming here for years, but
recently, a different type of visitor has
been passing through Graceland’s
guarded gates. With Robert Mugabe
ailing and the end of his 37-year rule
in sight, Grace, backed by a hard
core of supporters, appears to be
positioning herself to take over.
Western diplomats, who have
watched Zimbabwe’s long, tragic
slide from relative prosperity tochaos and impoverishment, warn
that such a move would trigger a
complete collapse. To pay the wages
of its increasingly mutinous army,
the regime has recently been reduced
to selling elephants to Chinese wildlife
parks. By the time Zimbabwe’s hyper-
inflated currency was finally abolished
last year, a beer in a bar cost five
trillion of the local dollars.
A shapely former switchboard
operator who caught President
Mugabe’s eye when she landed a job
in his office, Grace, now 51, has no
direct experience of government and- say her detractors – no obvious talent
for anything beyond spending money.
The First Lady’s love of shopping
and casual requisitioning of state
assets have won her the nickname
“DisGrace” among opponents.
Even so, few grasped the scale
of her extravagance until a leaked
intelligence report surfaced two years
ago. It estimated that, in 2014 alone,
Mrs Mugabe spent $4 million on
luxury goods, including 62 pairs of
Salvatore Ferragamo shoes and 33
pairs of Guccis, 12 diamond rings, a
$150,000 Rolex watch and $400,000
diamond-encrusted headboard for the
marital bed. The papers also claim she
spent $60,000 on lingerie – Jean Yu
and Strumpet & Pink are her favourite
brands. Asked on a previous shopping
trip to Paris why she was so keen on
Ferragamos, Grace explained, “I have
narrow feet and they are the ones
I find most comfortable.”
If the shoes she now aims to fill are
those of her husband, the country
may be in for even grimmer times.
Millions of ordinary Zimbabweans
have no shoes at all. Or jobs. Or
enough food to eat. Increasingly
paranoid in his old age, President
Mugabe attributes the continuing
crisis to a conspiracy of “imperialist”
interests, which do not want to see a
black African country succeed. Almost
everyone else blames his government’s
seizure of thousands of white-owned
farms, which has led to the collapse
of the agricultural sector.
A country that could once export
surpluses of wheat, maize and tobacco
is now unable to feed itself, and the
confiscated farms – mostly handed out
to his family and ruling party stooges- now lie barren and neglected.
Grace owns at least a dozen of the
farms. According to a source at the
embattled Zimbabwe Commercial
Farmers Union, several have ceased
production and she is rarely seen at
any of them. Then again, the First
FROM LEFT: While ordinary Zimbabweans live in
misery, the Mugabes attend their daughter Bona’s
graduation, Grace goes shoe shopping in Paris and
he eats cake at an event to celebrate his birthday.