They found 888 handbags and 1060 pairs of shoes in Imelda Marcos’s palace after her husband was thrown out of the Philippines’ presidential palace.
This week, Zimbabweans dared to ask: what would a free Zimbabwe find in Grace Mugabe’s closet?
The widely loathed “First Shopper”, who last week was nowhere to be seen on election day — for the first time — has splurged over R1-million a time on shopping expeditions to the world’s fashion capitals.
She has reportedly packed whole palettes of Gucci and Ferragamo parcels onto a private jet.
She has even shopped for houses that weren’t for sale — and once simply took one from a white farming couple near Harare.
This week, as rumours surfaced that “Grabbin’ Grace” had decamped to Malaysia, Zimbabwean human rights activists warned that Robert Mugabe’s 42-year-old second wife could be smuggling plundered designer loot out of the country as her husband’s grip on power remained uncertain.
Geoff Hill, author of What Happens After Mugabe, told the Sunday Times: “It would be neglectful of a future government in Zimbabwe if they did not get a firm of auditors to investigate Grace Mugabe — to ask, has she benefited from ill- gotten gains, and where is all the loot?
“Zimbabweans want to know — and have a right to know — how she has funded this ridiculous champagne lifestyle.
“The Abacha family in Nigeria and the Mobutu family in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are still facing actions to recover loot from them, so there is ample precedent.”
One Zimbabwean human rights lawyer said: ‘‘She has humiliated Zimbabweans for too long; she cannot now be allowed to get away with it.”
While there are no reliable estimates of Mugabe’s personal wealth, Norb Garrett, head of the Kroll organisation’s business intelligence and investigations unit, told Forbes magazine that Mugabe was a “potential candidate” on the world’s list of billionaire dictators.
Zimbabwe was “the next place to look for a large amount of money missing”, he said.
Chengetai Mupara, former president of the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union, said Grace was among a number of government figures whose assets would need scrutinising when Mugabe finally lost power.
“There is no doubt that the first lady’s lifestyle has cost Zimbabwe quite a substantial amount of money, and that much of this will need to be repatriated to the people of Zimbabwe,” he said.
In 2006, the Sunday Times revealed that Gideon Gono, Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank governor, had funded many of Grace’s shopping sprees to the tune of millions of US dollars, using illegal “parallel market” currency-conversion deals.
Responding to criticism that her spending on her size 8-A feet jarred with the crushing poverty in her country, she told one reporter: “I have very narrow feet, so I wear only Ferragamo.”
The Times of London described one trip: “In London, Grace would insist on taking over a suite at the exclusive Claridge’s Hotel. Bodyguards in tow, she would cruise through Harrods before piling her purchases into her chauffeur-driven Mercedes.”
Although reliable information on the couple’s personal life is rare, sources increasingly indicate that Grace’s high life is crumbling around her.
Last year, the notoriously overdressed former secretary was humiliated when she and Mugabe attempted to visit the family home of the president’s popular first wife, Sally Hayfron, in Ghana.
Grace had to wait in the car after the family refused to allow her in.
Anti-Mugabe websites have linked Grace to senior — and very junior — Zanu-PF members, including businessmen Peter Pamire and James Makamba, alleging that Mugabe had punished both for their intimate friendships with his wife.
The news website newzimbabwe.com claimed that Pamire — a black-empowerment advocate who died in a car crash in 1996, according to the official version — was in fact murdered by the Central Intelligence Organisation because he was thought to be having an affair with Grace.
The same site claimed that Makamba was effectively exiled by Mugabe.
In January this year, it emerged that Grace was embroiled in a feud with Mugabe’s family. According to Zimbabwe’s Guardian newspaper, Mugabe’s nephew, Leo Mugabe, had embarked on a campaign to stop his aunt from plundering the family fortune, because “Grace Mugabe has indicated that she intends to inherit most of President Mugabe’s assets in the event that he dies”.
Mugabe married Grace in 1996, having had a long-term affair with his former secretary during his marriage to Sally Mugabe, who died in 1992.
Hill said Mugabe had been “desperate for children”, having lost his son while he was in prison. He has had three with Grace: Bona, Robert jnr and Chatunga.
The marriage coincided with the start of the collapse in the economy and democratic freedoms in Zimbabwe, and many Zimbabweans believe it was Grace’s influence that led to the president’s hardline policies.
But “the reality is that it was Sally who helped keep Mugabe’s policies moderate; with Grace, we see the raw Robert. Sally was his intellectual equal and a true friend, and had a positive influence over him; Grace has no influence in terms of his decisions,” said Hill.
Grace, née Marufu, was reportedly born in South Africa and brought to Zimbabwe by her Zimbabwean father as a child.
She attended a Catholic school and, as a teenager, married Zimbabwe Air Force officer Stanley Goreraza, with whom she had a son, Russell. The Mugabes apparently kept up an amicable relationship with Goreraza, even visiting him in hospital in China while he was posted there as a diplomat.
Hill said Mugabe — still a Marxist at heart — was uncomfortable with his wife’s profligacy which, some observers suggested, had led to a strain in the relationship.
Hill said: “Her maiden name, Marufu, means ‘funeral’ in Shona — and, for Zimbabweans, her arrival on the scene marked the funeral of logical policies in Zimbabwe.”
Grabbin’ Grace’s Excesses Include:
• Being seen with “15 trolley loads” of luxury goods in the first- class lounge at Singapore airport, according to Britain’s Mirror;
• Spending more than R600000 in an afternoon in London;
• Using R8-million in government funds to help build a 30-room house she called Gracelands;
• Demanding that her husband fund the building of a R100-million mansion near Harare, fitted with Italian baths and oriental carpets ; and
• Spending R1.1-million in a two-hour shopping spree in Paris after finding a loophole in a European Union travel ban against her.
This week, Zimbabweans dared to ask: what would a free Zimbabwe find in Grace Mugabe’s closet?
The widely loathed “First Shopper”, who last week was nowhere to be seen on election day — for the first time — has splurged over R1-million a time on shopping expeditions to the world’s fashion capitals.
She has reportedly packed whole palettes of Gucci and Ferragamo parcels onto a private jet.
She has even shopped for houses that weren’t for sale — and once simply took one from a white farming couple near Harare.
This week, as rumours surfaced that “Grabbin’ Grace” had decamped to Malaysia, Zimbabwean human rights activists warned that Robert Mugabe’s 42-year-old second wife could be smuggling plundered designer loot out of the country as her husband’s grip on power remained uncertain.
Geoff Hill, author of What Happens After Mugabe, told the Sunday Times: “It would be neglectful of a future government in Zimbabwe if they did not get a firm of auditors to investigate Grace Mugabe — to ask, has she benefited from ill- gotten gains, and where is all the loot?
“Zimbabweans want to know — and have a right to know — how she has funded this ridiculous champagne lifestyle.
“The Abacha family in Nigeria and the Mobutu family in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are still facing actions to recover loot from them, so there is ample precedent.”
One Zimbabwean human rights lawyer said: ‘‘She has humiliated Zimbabweans for too long; she cannot now be allowed to get away with it.”
While there are no reliable estimates of Mugabe’s personal wealth, Norb Garrett, head of the Kroll organisation’s business intelligence and investigations unit, told Forbes magazine that Mugabe was a “potential candidate” on the world’s list of billionaire dictators.
Zimbabwe was “the next place to look for a large amount of money missing”, he said.
Chengetai Mupara, former president of the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union, said Grace was among a number of government figures whose assets would need scrutinising when Mugabe finally lost power.
“There is no doubt that the first lady’s lifestyle has cost Zimbabwe quite a substantial amount of money, and that much of this will need to be repatriated to the people of Zimbabwe,” he said.
In 2006, the Sunday Times revealed that Gideon Gono, Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank governor, had funded many of Grace’s shopping sprees to the tune of millions of US dollars, using illegal “parallel market” currency-conversion deals.
Responding to criticism that her spending on her size 8-A feet jarred with the crushing poverty in her country, she told one reporter: “I have very narrow feet, so I wear only Ferragamo.”
The Times of London described one trip: “In London, Grace would insist on taking over a suite at the exclusive Claridge’s Hotel. Bodyguards in tow, she would cruise through Harrods before piling her purchases into her chauffeur-driven Mercedes.”
Although reliable information on the couple’s personal life is rare, sources increasingly indicate that Grace’s high life is crumbling around her.
Last year, the notoriously overdressed former secretary was humiliated when she and Mugabe attempted to visit the family home of the president’s popular first wife, Sally Hayfron, in Ghana.
Grace had to wait in the car after the family refused to allow her in.
Anti-Mugabe websites have linked Grace to senior — and very junior — Zanu-PF members, including businessmen Peter Pamire and James Makamba, alleging that Mugabe had punished both for their intimate friendships with his wife.
The news website newzimbabwe.com claimed that Pamire — a black-empowerment advocate who died in a car crash in 1996, according to the official version — was in fact murdered by the Central Intelligence Organisation because he was thought to be having an affair with Grace.
The same site claimed that Makamba was effectively exiled by Mugabe.
In January this year, it emerged that Grace was embroiled in a feud with Mugabe’s family. According to Zimbabwe’s Guardian newspaper, Mugabe’s nephew, Leo Mugabe, had embarked on a campaign to stop his aunt from plundering the family fortune, because “Grace Mugabe has indicated that she intends to inherit most of President Mugabe’s assets in the event that he dies”.
Mugabe married Grace in 1996, having had a long-term affair with his former secretary during his marriage to Sally Mugabe, who died in 1992.
Hill said Mugabe had been “desperate for children”, having lost his son while he was in prison. He has had three with Grace: Bona, Robert jnr and Chatunga.
The marriage coincided with the start of the collapse in the economy and democratic freedoms in Zimbabwe, and many Zimbabweans believe it was Grace’s influence that led to the president’s hardline policies.
But “the reality is that it was Sally who helped keep Mugabe’s policies moderate; with Grace, we see the raw Robert. Sally was his intellectual equal and a true friend, and had a positive influence over him; Grace has no influence in terms of his decisions,” said Hill.
Grace, née Marufu, was reportedly born in South Africa and brought to Zimbabwe by her Zimbabwean father as a child.
She attended a Catholic school and, as a teenager, married Zimbabwe Air Force officer Stanley Goreraza, with whom she had a son, Russell. The Mugabes apparently kept up an amicable relationship with Goreraza, even visiting him in hospital in China while he was posted there as a diplomat.
Hill said Mugabe — still a Marxist at heart — was uncomfortable with his wife’s profligacy which, some observers suggested, had led to a strain in the relationship.
Hill said: “Her maiden name, Marufu, means ‘funeral’ in Shona — and, for Zimbabweans, her arrival on the scene marked the funeral of logical policies in Zimbabwe.”
Grabbin’ Grace’s Excesses Include:
• Being seen with “15 trolley loads” of luxury goods in the first- class lounge at Singapore airport, according to Britain’s Mirror;
• Spending more than R600000 in an afternoon in London;
• Using R8-million in government funds to help build a 30-room house she called Gracelands;
• Demanding that her husband fund the building of a R100-million mansion near Harare, fitted with Italian baths and oriental carpets ; and
• Spending R1.1-million in a two-hour shopping spree in Paris after finding a loophole in a European Union travel ban against her.
(Rowan Philip, London - Sunday Times, ) 06/o4/08)
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