Mugabe: His loves and marriages

By Patrick Kariuki

Robert Mugabe, tyrant ruler of Zimbabwe, has had affairs with numerous women in his life but only two have counted.

Gracious Sally

The Press were banned from the Grace and Mugabe wedding which saw some journalist convicted for speculating about the expectations of the wedding

Grace is indeed stylish.

The first was the late Sally Hayfron, his first wife. She was a good woman. She kept Mugabe in check and ensured he ruled Zimbabwe well, it has been said. Zimbabweans still affectionately refer to her as ‘Amai’, the Shona term for ‘mother’. Their story begins in Ghana.

When Mugabe was still a young boy, his father took off to the city of Bulawayo, never to return. The young Mugabe, fatherless, became lonely and bookish. He did well in school and later went to Ghana, Africa’s first black ruled country, to teach at Takoradi Teacher Training College. This is where, at a reception in a Catholic church; he met Sally who was also a teacher.

Falling in love

They got talking and Robert slowly became intoxicated with her. She possessed a keen intellect equal to his, was exuberant and beautiful. She also shared his political indignations. Inevitably, they became an item.

Later, Mugabe went back to Rhodesia and wrote to Sally asking her to follow him for he wished to marry her. She instantly agreed.

“I wrote back immediately to tell him his own wishes in this regard would be respected... I never guessed that it would be such a long protracted struggle,” she said.

That struggle began in South Africa. Enroute to Rhodesia for her wedding, she was detained at the Jan Smuts International Airport in Johannesburg, now known as the Oliver Tambo Airport.

“I was detained because I refused to answer some of their stupid questions... and because I wore a Ghanaian costume with Nkrumah’s image on it,” she said of the incident. She had to appeal to her American Airline, PANAM, to come to her rescue.

Ecstatic wedding

Eventually, she arrived in Rhodesia where her ecstatic wedding to Mugabe at St Peter’s Catholic Church in Harare in 1961 soon washed her earlier troubles away. Mugabe’s single mother was chief guest and cheerleader.

That joy was short-lived. Mugabe’s stoking fire in the belly soon burst into raging flames. In 1962, comrade Bob joined a new party called Zimbabwe African People’s Union to agitate for independence. Soon after, the detentions started. The Rhodesian Government did not just detain Mugabe and his cronies, but also their wives.

In 1964, during a rare moment of peace, a boy was born to the Mugabes. They called him Nhamodzenyika, a sad name that means trials and tribulations. It was also to prove darkly prescient for the little guy died of kidney problems when he was barely three years old. This was just after Mugabe’s imprisonment for ten years for “subversive speech”.

Alone and grief-stricken, Sally went into exile in London to continue with the resistance.

Eventually, Mugabe was released and immediately fled Zimbabwe to launch a guerrilla war. He won and became ruler of Zimbabwe in 1980, moving with Sally to State House.

The story goes on that he hid millions of dollars in European banks under Sally’s name. When she died in 1992, a provision in Ghanaian law that stipulates a wife’s assets goes to her family, not the husband, saw him lose all the money to her relatives. Apparently, he broke every window in State House on that day.

Long before Sally died, however, he had had a number of affairs after discovering they could no longer have children.

Contrary to perception, it is not always easy for presidents to meet women; this is why they often succumb to beautiful State House secretaries, interns and officials.

Disgrace

In comrade Bob’s case, one of those secretaries struck the jackpot. She is now his wife and the First Lady of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans refer to her by different names. ‘Gucci Grace’ is one of them due to her love for shopping.

There is another, Dis-Grace, whose meaning only a Zimbabwean would perhaps truly be able to properly speak to. They say, however, that her extravagant lifestyle in a collapsed country and the public outbursts of temper and violence do not represent the proud example their First Lady should set.

Her official name is Grace Marufu Mugabe. At the time she met Mugabe, she was married to another man, Stanley Gorezaza, a soldier in the Zimbabwean Air Force.

It is not clear who initiated things. Mugabe is 41 years her senior and when they first met in the early 1990s, he was almost an octogenarian while she was a striking twenty-something. However, it doesn’t matter, for faced with presidential power, Stanley Gorezaza had no chance. Mugabe and his youthful secretary launched their passion in his hallowed rooms of power. In three years, two children had been born.

Stanley was ordered to divorce Grace or, in the words of Zimbabwe’s online tabloids, “face the consequences”. He divorced her and was sent on a diplomatic posting in far away China. The reason for this was so he could not meet secretly with Grace, whom Mugabe clearly doesn’t trust to stay faithful.

Mugabe secretly took Grace as a junior wife under customary law. As a Catholic, he could not divorce Sally. Their relationship and wedding details were to stay under wraps and when the story leaked, his Chief of Intelligence was accused of treachery and sent to prison where he mysteriously went blind.

However, when Sally died, Mugabe was in the clear. In 1996, four years after Sally Hayfron’s death, Comrade Bob was able to finally marry Grace Marufu, his South African mistress, in an extravagant church ceremony.

Thousands of guests swarmed to the dusty rural mission station of Kutama, 80km west of Harare, to witness their President’s marriage. Kutama, Mugabe’s home village and the prestigious Jesuit College where Mugabe was educated, buzzed with excitement as music blared and beer flowed. The best man was former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano. Sam Nujoma from Namibia and Botswana’s second president, Ketumile Masire were also present. Nelson Mandela also graced the occasion.

What started as an uneventful if crowded church ceremony quickly degenerated into a chaotic reception. Many guests who arrived early took seats in the VIP section refusing to make way for the diplomatic staff.

The catering for the about 15,000 guests was supplied by the army, with assistance from the university and local technical colleges. A local caterer from a Zimbabwean hotel chain estimated that food alone would account for as much as a third of the much touted but unconfirmed budget.

Moreover, the wedding did not end on Saturday itself. About 200 people, who spent the night under tents, embarked on a drinking orgy the next day.

The State also supplied a massive police and military presence, with the entire 80 km stretch from Harare to Kutama manned by police in shiny new Mercedes and siren-wailing BMW patrol bikes.

State transport that included three helicopters to ferry the four visiting former heads of state were also present despite Mugabe insisting he was footing the wedding expenses of about Sh50million from his pocket.

And the most interesting statistic of all: security authorities caught 1,500 gatecrashers.

Wedding of the decade

It was billed as Africa’s wedding of the decade by the foreign press. Zimbabwe’s press called it the ‘wedding of the century’.

Many commentators argue that where Sally restrained Mugabe, Grace unleashed his inner demon. Their marriage has certainly coincided with Zimbabwe’s worst days.

Her extravagant lifestyle has been well documented and one wonders if her financial demands upon Mugabe, coupled with the alleged loss of his fortune to Sally’s Ghanaian relatives, has something to do with the collapsed economy and his brutality.

Grace has also allegedly cheated on poor Bob many times. The 40-year age difference alone makes this highly probable. Even women have needs and old Bob may not be up to it anymore.

Gossip abounds of her steamy trysts in Hong Kong and elsewhere. One of her alleged lovers perished in a road accident. His loved ones believe he was murdered.

Robert Verkaik, a British journalist, traces another older route to the source of Mugabe’s rage: England. In 1970, the British declared that Sally was not a British subject (unlike Mugabe) on account of being Ghanaian and had no right to stay in London or work there. They threatened to deport her back to Africa.

Mugabe hand-wrote a bitter letter to the British Prime Minister from behind the prison walls. It was eloquent and seething with rage: “Has she ceased to be my wife merely because she has a Ghanaian passport? I pose these questions, Mr Prime Minister, because it seems to me the Home Office is holding onto technicalities completely deprived of morality.”

The eloquence is certainly not gone and the rage remains. It is a charge he aims at the British Government every chance he gets. How much of it has to do with Sally, who is long dead, is unclear. What is clear is that Grace has no interest whatsoever in his politics. Lucky for Zimbabwe, she is said to be adamant that Mugabe does not run for president again. Perhaps, she has shopped enough.

—Additional information from Internet sources