Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, has for the first time denied speculation that he is lining up his wife, Grace, to succeed him as head of state, though she has declined to rule herself out of the race.
The first lady has enjoyed a meteoric rise in Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and was recently appointed its secretary for women’s affairs. Photographs of her sitting alongside the president in the cabinet have done little to squash rumours that her 91-year-old husband is seeking to build a political dynasty.
But asked by the Guardian if his wife might take over from him, Robert Mugabe replied: “She doesn’t have those ambitions. No, I don’t think so. She has accepted the post of being secretary for women’s affairs and she has got her own charity to care for.”
The couple, on a state visit to neighbouring South Africa, spoke briefly to British journalists during a banquet on Wednesday night in the capital, Pretoria. Grace Mugabe delighted guests by taking to the dance floor with the South African president, Jacob Zuma, leaving her husband a sombre, solitary figure at the top table.
Returning to her seat, she made light of media reports that she is ill, possibly with cancer. “I’m dead, I’m a corpse!” the 49-year-old said, jokingly.
But asked if she would like to be president one day, she laughed and said: “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
The Zimbabwean leadership battle has intensified, with Robert Mugabe, the world’s oldest leader, increasingly frail and Zanu-PF locked in a bitter factional struggle. Last year, his wife made a dramatic entrance on to the political stage, holding a series of rallies and denouncing the vice-president, Joice Mujuru, once seen as a possible contender but since expelled from the party.
“They say I want to be president,” Grace Mugabe said at one event. “Why not? Am I not a Zimbabwean?”
Although Emmerson Mnangagwa was eventually named vice-president at last December’s Zanu-PF congress, analysts say he is by no means certain to take over when the president retires or dies.
Robert Mugabe began an affair with Grace, then a secretary, while still married to his first wife, Sally, who died from kidney failure in 1992. She is often nicknamed DisGrace, Gucci Grace and First Shopper because of extravagant spending sprees that contrast with Zimbabwe’s teetering economy. She once punched a British photographer outside a luxury hotel in Hong Kong.
Both she and her husband have been treated like royalty by South African officials during this week’s state visit, Mugabe’s first here since 1994. Their health was toasted with champagne during the banquet, whose menu included grilled kingklip on a bed of aubergines served with a light curry sauce, a medallion of beef fillet served on cream potato cake with a seasonal vegetable parcel, finished with a rich beef jus, and chicken roulade with feta, olives and sweet basil on lyonnaise potatoes, butternut squash and vegetables.
Referring to Mugabe as a “dear brother”, Zuma said: “Comrade president, as chairperson of the African Union, you lead us in the quest for peace and stability in every corner of Africa.”
Mugabe then walked to the podium and, as is his wont, railed against western powers. “Regrettably, the west continues to use economic sanctions as an instrument to effect regime change in Zimbabwe,” he said. “Groundless allegations of human rights abuses levelled against us fail to mask the naked imperialist urge to grab our resources and exploit our people.”
South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, criticised the way the country had rolled out the red carpet for Mugabe, arguing that during his 35-year rule he ignored politically motivated massacres and presided over years of institutional human rights abuses.
“Today South Africa hails him as a hero,” said Stevens Mokgalapa, shadow minister of international relations. “How can that be?”
He added: “The South African government’s veneration of President Mugabe is irresponsible, insensitive and a disservice to an entire people who have suffered under his rule.”
