Robert Mugabe’s widow has been given top level assurances that she will avoid arrest when she returns to Zimbabwe for his funeral.
Grace Mugabe, 54, has been worried that with the former dictator no longer by her side, she will be vilified and detained on government orders on corruption charges once back in Zimbabwe.
Discussions between officials in Harare and her aides in Singapore, where the much-despised former First Lady is hiding out, have led to ‘Gucci Grace’ being told she will not be detained for using state funds for her own use.
Diplomatic sources stressed she may still face investigation into her finances, property ownership and bank accounts, said to be spread across the world, but with heads of state flying in and an international focus on Zimbabwe in the coming weeks, she will be allowed her time to grieve.
Her pain is said to be ‘immeasurable’ after Mugabe died in Singapore last Friday at the age of 95, leaving her to face his enemies and those she made herself as First Lady while married to the African leader.
The couple had been living quietly in a Singapore suburb since last April when despot Mugabe, ailing from poor eyesight, cancer and being unable to walk, flew in for treatment.
Their daughter Bona, 31, has studied in Singapore and is with her mother on the Island.
He had used a private Singapore hospital and shunned the health services of his own country for around eight years.
He died in Singapore’s Gleneagles hospital, but his family said his age had finally claimed his life and not the cancer.
His body has remained at the Singapore Casket funeral home and was visited by relatives and friends over the weekend, but the grieving widow was not to be seen.
Hours after Mugabe’s passing Gucci Grace, given the moniker for her lavish spending habits, was seen leaving the funeral home, her head covered from prying eyes under a blanket or shawl.
Grace was Mugabe’s second wife and they married in 1996, having two sons and a daughter. He married his first wife Sally Mugabe in 1961 but she died in 1992.
Mugabe’s sons Robert Jr and Chatunga gained a reputation for their playboy lifestyle, and were evicted from a flat in South Africa in 2017 after it was damaged in a party.
That same year, Chatunga was pictured on social media appearing to pour a £200 bottle of champagne over a watch which he claimed was worth £45,000.
Robert Jr had dreams of a basketball career but US sanctions meant he could not play in America, and he launched a clothing label in December 2017 called xGx.
Mugabe met Grace in the early 1990s when she was one of his shy young typists, but she became an ambitious politician who also wanted to become president.
Speaking in 2013, she said: ‘He just started talking to me, asking me about my life. I didn’t know it was leading somewhere. I was quite a shy person, very shy.’
The reports of her lavish spending and explosive temper earned her the title ‘Dis-Grace’ – and eyebrows were raised in 2014 when she gained a PhD in three months.
Her spending was an uncomfortable contrast with an economic crisis which left most of the 16 million population mired in poverty and unemployment.
The Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose anti-corruption agents have targeted several of Mugabe’s former aides, is believed to be keen on establishing what Mugabe’s widow syphoned off during her husband’s three decades of power.
But a source said: ‘She has been given a guarantee that she won’t be stitched up.
‘Her husband has been declared a national hero and it would not be appropriate to interfere at this time when she has suffered such a loss.’
Mugabe’s funeral next Sunday is likely to be held at the National Heroes Acre, which was built in 1981 under Mugabe’s orders and is Zimbabwe’s monument to war heroes. – Daily Mail
