 | I think I'm gonna be sick. |
Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace are this weekend preparing for a lavish wedding anniversary celebration by approving a guest list that includes the names of African leaders seeking massive debt relief for their impoverished countries. | Now I know I'm gonna be sick. Please tell me Geldof and Bono sent their regrets... |
"It will be a classy, royal-like occasion," a government source said in Harare. "The Mugabes will be driven from a church service at Kutama Mission outside Harare where they were married in August 1996 in an open Rolls-Royce with horses in front. That's how they want it." | They should be driven from the church in chains and sackcloth. |
The wedding anniversary party will reportedly cost close to £1m. It will be preceded by a Mugabe family trip to an as yet unnamed country with close ties to Zimbabwe - possibly Libya. The all-day party will be partly paid for by President Mugabe - one of Africa's wealthiest men - partly by impoverished Zimbabwean taxpayers and partly by local companies seeking to stay in business at a time when the words "ethnic cleansing" are never far away from the lips of European, Asian and middle-class African businesspeople. Grace Mugabe is 40 years younger than her husband. The couple met when President Mugabe was still a married man. | They were probably introduced by Suha Arafat, who knows from golddiggers and mass murdering klepto-thugocrats. |
His first wife, Ghanaian-born Sally Mugabe, died in 1992 and 40 days of national mourning was declared. Then rumours started that the austere Catholic-educated Mugabe had been having an affair for years with a State House security operative, Grace Marufa. Robert Mugabe fathered two children with her - Robert Jnr (now 18) and Bona, who is 16. The children were presented to almost 30,000 wedding guests at the end of August 1996. Since then the couple have had a third child. They will have a 10th wedding anniversary celebration next year. "It will probably be held at Mugabe's multi-million-pound palace in the suburb of Borrowdale," said a source in the ruling Zanu-PF party. "This year's anniversary will be huge. Next year's will be unnecessary colossal," he said, owing to the unfortunate demise of Mugabe and his Zanu cronies at the hands of an enraged populace. |