controversy swirling around burial of Zimbabwe’s founding leer, Robert Mugabe, centers on his widow, Grace, who has remained dramatically cloaked behind a heavy black veil as she succeeded in getting country’s President to scrap his plans for ex-leer to be buried in a simple plot alongside or national heroes and inste build a grand new mausoleum for her husband. Kwn as a strong-willed woman with political ambitions, Grace Mugabe has me most of her role as grieving widow. Some in Zimbabwe think she is using issue to reassert herself as a force to be reckoned with, in country.

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Grace hours Mugabe with revised funeral plans

When 54-year-old Grace objected to funeral plans for Mugabe, who died last week at 95, President Emmerson Mnangagwa came to her palatial 25-bedroom residence in Harare’s posh Borrowdale suburb to consult her about how internment should proceed. He departed saying he would respect her wishes and scrapped his funeral plans. She and or family members said y h enlisted support of Zimbabwe’s tritional chiefs to determine how Mugabe would be buried. In a series of anuncements throughout week, y divulged logistical details over Mugabe's final resting place. saga culminated Friday, September 13, with anuncement that funeral h been postponed for 30 days until elaborate new edifice could be built at Heroes’ Acre national monument.

“We are building a mausoleum for our founding far at top of hill at Heroes Acre,” Mnangagwa said on state television of plan to construct imposing monument to Mugabe, a guerrilla leer who fought to end white-mirity rule when country was kwn as Rhodesia. “It won’t be finished, so we will only bury him after we have completed construction.”

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Latest acrimony, latest achievement

wrangle over burial highlighted lasting acrimony between Mugabe’s widow and Mnangagwa, who helped oust Mugabe in 2017 after 37 years of what is seen as a tumultuous rule by some, as country went from prosperity to ecomic decline, hyperinflation and widespre shorts. It was also latest achievement for Grace Mugabe, who rose from being one of President’s secretaries to become First Ly. Mugabe and his first wife, Sally, h one son who died while Mugabe was jailed by Rhodesian regime. When Sally was ailing with kidney failure, Mugabe struck up a relationship with Grace, 41 years his junior, and y h a daughter and two sons. Following Sally’s death in 1992, Mugabe married Grace in 1996 in a lavish ceremony at his birthplace, Zvimba.

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Grace's fall and rise

As Zimbabwe’s First Ly, Grace became kwn for shopping sprees in Europe and Asia, building huge residences, and staking claim to farms in choice Mazowe area, outside Harare, as part of Mugabe’s seizure of once white-owned properties. Grace also featured in a series of scandals and lawsuits, including one in which she sued a diamond dealer she said didn’t deliver a 100-carat diamond she claimed to have paid for. In South Africa, she was charged with assaulting a young woman who h been in her sons’ hotel suite in Johannesburg. She also became increasingly prominent politically, becoming he of Women’s League of her husband’s ruling ZANU-PF party. She launched a series of public attacks on n-Vice President Joice Mujuru that led to Mujuru being sacked in 2014. She n turned her sights on Mnangagwa, who was fired from vice presidency in 2017 and appeared poised to take that position herself. Mnangagwa fled country, saying he feared for his life. prospect of Grace Mugabe gaining so much power, especially as Mugabe was becoming visibly feeble, prompted military to put couple under house arrest. Mugabe was forced to resign in vember 2017, and his wife was expelled from ruling party. With Mugabe’s death and protracted drama surrounding his burial, Grace has reasserted her national prominence — and her ascendency over Mnangagwa.

“That stuff about tritional leers making decision is rubbish. Grace was determined to decide how Mugabe should be buried,” said Zimbabwean analyst Ibbo Mandaza. Since Mugabe’s ouster “Mnangagwa has t taken any action against her. thing has happened to mansions, properties, state allowances. whole narrative of ruling class is same. re is hypocrisy and looting. re is hor or dignity. Maybe in a year we will see Grace in bed with Mnangagwa, politically, if t literally,” he said.

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