Grace Mugabe’s race against time

It began with her supersonic speed in being awarded a controversial PhD in social sciences. Then before Zimbabweans could realise what was going on Grace Mugabe, well known as Gucci Grace, due to her fond for shopping and quality lifestyle, had taken another meteoric rise and landed herself a powerful political position within the ZANU PF mainstream politics as the women’s league boss.
Now she comfortably sits together with her husband, president Robert Mugabe, in the powerful ZANU PF politburo, the highest decision making body of the party between congresses.
In a month she will join her husband in the country’s cabinet as minister of gender affairs, the position usually appointed to the person who is in charge of the women’s league in the party.
As if that is not enough Grace has been fingered in the controversial farm evictions at her Manzou farm where the black war veterans who invaded the farm in the early 2000 at the height of the controversial land reform programme, were last week evicted to pave way to her game reserve, although she is denying ownership of the farm.
Her Mazowe orphanage centre, built by the Chinese was completed in a record time and this week she is hiring construction workers to commence the construction of a state of the art High School.
Already the centre also houses a state of the art primary school whose tuition fee is currently pegged at $2000.
If what she has been saying is to be believed, she will soon construct a state of the art university and hospital to complete her Mazowe empire.
She also runs one of the biggest dairy project in the land with her Gushungo dairies, a $13 million state of the art milk plant, already supplying the lion’s share of milk products in the country.
Grace has also large tracks of land along the Bindura road where mechanised farming is taking place.
All it seems is she is a woman on a mission with analysts claiming she wants to finish all her projects while her husband who turns 91 years next month and is increasingly becoming frail due to poor health, is still in office or before he dies.
Political analyst Alexander Rusero said Grace’s accumulation of wealth is symbolic with power.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely and what Grace is doing is symbolic because she is so much obsessed with power,” Rusero said.
“Grace is also aware that Mugabe’s age is a blow to her ambition so she is in a rush to make sure she grabs whatever she can before the husband is in capacitated.”