Robert Mugabe<\/a>, the nation has experienced an unsettling and contradictory jumble of deep reverence, nostalgia, indifference, hypocrisy and anger, combined with an almost soap-opera quantity of plot twists.<\/p>\nAt the heart of those contradictions and twists, sits the enigmatic and widely reviled Grace Mugabe \u2014 the grieving widow, her face now hidden beneath a dark veil, a woman whose fortunes, over the decades, have revealed so much about how power really works in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
Who is Grace Mugabe?<\/p>\n
She was the secretary who married the president, who then became infamous for her lavish shopping sprees and fiery temper. Grace earned a dubious doctorate and swept into politics, to head Zanu PF\u2019s Women\u2019s League.<\/p>\n
\u2018Why we are mourning for Mugabe\u2019<\/p>\n
It was Grace\u2019s increasingly vitriolic interventions and obvious ambition that \u2014 it\u2019s widely believed \u2014 provoked the military to stage the 2017 coup in order to thwart her faction in the governing party and with it her apparent dynastic plans.<\/p>\n
Was there misogyny wrapped up in the public\u2019s attitude towards her? No doubt. But the practical result of her politicking was that she fled the country and was ruthlessly purged from the party.<\/p>\n
But now she\u2019s back. And not, perhaps, just to bury her husband.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s tough. She\u2019ll stay in Zimbabwe. She\u2019ll be persecuted, but she\u2019ll stay,\u201d said Patrick Zhuwao, Mugabe\u2019s nephew and one of Grace\u2019s political allies who has chosen to remain abroad for his own safety.<\/p>\n
Grace married Mugabe, 41 years her senior, in 1996<\/p>\n
This past week, Grace has been silent but centre-stage in Harare, as a furious tug-of-war has raged, sometimes in public, over the logistics and politics of where to bury her husband\u2019s 95-year-old body.<\/p>\n
There she was, sobbing, as the plane carrying his coffin from Singapore touched down in Harare. She declined the State\u2019s hearse. She tore up its funeral plans. The family complained of State coercion.<\/p>\n
The dispute could be dismissed as a sideshow \u2014 the sort of fractious haggling that might accompany the funeral of anyone who lived a long and complicated life.
\nBut here in Zimbabwe \u2014 an opaque, corrupt, centralised and turbulent would-be-democracy \u2014 every twist has been closely analysed for what it might reveal about an all-powerful elite that operates behind closed doors but sometimes erupts in spectacular public feuds, complete with allegations of poisonings and assassinations.<\/p>\n
The two met and started having an affair when she was a typist in Zimbabwe\u2019s State House<\/p>\n
Hence the endless questions. Is Grace planning a political comeback? Who is winning the grave war? Has President Emmerson Mnangagwa backed down or is he being magnanimous in victory? Was the low turnout at Saturday\u2019s State funeral arranged to spite the Mugabes?<\/p>\n
Why did no-one applaud Mnangagwa\u2019s florid speech? Who now wields power within the Mugabe family \u2014 Grace or the clan elders? Why did Grace demand a special mausoleum for her husband? Will she be safe here? Can she make peace with Mnangagwa?<\/p>\n
You can see why they call it a soap opera.<\/p>\n
From liberator to tyrant<\/p>\n
The truth is that Grace will have to cut some sort of deal with the government if she is to remain in Zimbabwe with her wealth and security and family intact.
\nPerhaps she already has.<\/p>\n
She and her husband overestimated their political power and their popular support two years ago with spectacular and disastrous results for them both.<\/p>\n
But who knows how long any truce might hold. Zimbabwe\u2019s political future looks messy. The new government is trying to implement tough economic reforms but it lacks both public trust and the competence, unity and integrity to push through the necessary measures.<\/p>\n
The result is deepening economic hardship for the majority. Perhaps more fundamentally, Zimbabwean democracy is still broken.<\/p>\n
The opposition believes last year\u2019s elections were rigged, and it may choose to take to the streets, like its counterpart in Kenya, to provoke a security clampdown and a crisis and perhaps to secure a power-sharing deal.<\/p>\n
In the midst of all this, Grace will presumably remain at the Blue Roof \u2014 her grand mansion in Harare\u2019s northern suburbs \u2014 waiting for a hilltop mausoleum worthy of her husband to be completed, and preparing for a private burial and, perhaps, one more chance to spite the men who betrayed her husband and won this round in Zimbabwe\u2019s game of thrones. \u2014 BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been an appropriately fractured, uneasy week in Zimbabwe. As the country has tried to deal with the long-anticipated death of its loved and loathed founding father, Robert Mugabe, the nation has experienced an unsettling and contradictory jumble of deep reverence, nostalgia, indifference, hypocrisy and anger, combined with an almost soap-opera quantity of plot twists. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":13505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,12],"tags":[34,370,30],"class_list":{"0":"post-13683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-head-lines","9":"category-policy","10":"tag-emmerson-mnangagwa","11":"tag-grace-mugabe","12":"tag-robert-mugabe"},"yoast_head":"\n
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