Is This The World's Newest Despot?

She is the First Lady of povertystricken Zimbabwe, a former secretary who squanders millions of dollars on diamonds, designer shoes and high living. Yet, as her 93-year-old husband ails, the controversial Grace Mugabe is making a play for power.

- William Langley

The sense of gloom is everywhere in Zimbabwe’s down-at-heel capital, Harare. Partly because the street lights don’t work and a fuel shortage keeps cars off the road and even candles are running out. Yet one grand residence is all a-twinkle, with illuminated palms swaying in its tropical gardens and chandeliers glinting off the elegant hostess’ diamonds.

Grace Mugabe, second wife of the country’s 93-year-old President, loves to entertain in the house derisively known as “Graceland” – built at a cost of millions of dollars, set in 16 hectares of grounds and featuring such everyday necessities as a thermostatically controlled chiller cabinet for the First Lady’s favourite Godiva chocolates.

Assorted flatterers and freeloaders have been coming here for years, but recently, a different type of visitor has been passing through Graceland’s guarded gates. With Robert Mugabe ailing and the end of his 37-year rule in sight, Grace, backed by a hard core of supporters, appears to be positioning herself to take over.

Western diplomats, who have watched Zimbabwe’s long, tragic slide from relative prosperity to chaos and impoverishment, warn that such a move would trigger a complete collapse. To pay the wages of its increasingly mutinous army, the regime has recently been reduced to selling elephants to Chinese wildlife parks. By the time Zimbabwe’s hyper inflated currency was finally abolished last year, a beer in a bar cost five trillion of the local dollars.

A shapely former switchboard operator who caught President Mugabe’s eye when she landed a job in his office, Grace, now 51, has no direct experience of government and – say her detractors – no obvious talent for anything beyond spending money. The First Lady’s love of shopping and casual requisitioning of state assets have won her the nickname “DisGrace” among opponents.