TRADITIONAL leaders from Zvimba were on Friday reportedly kicked out of the late former President Robert Mugabe’s Blue Roof mansion by the ex-leader’s widow Grace as the feud over the final resting place of her husband rages on.
Highly-placed family sources told NewsDay that Grace was livid after it emerged that it was the
Zvimba chiefs led by Chief Zvimba who approached President Emmerson Mnangagwa pushing for Mugabe to be declared a national hero and interred at the national shrine.
“There was a stand-off after it became clear that the chiefs were pushing their own interests and prepared to alter Mugabe’s deathbed wishes not to be buried at the National Heroes Acre, but at his boyhood village in Kutama,” the source said.
The source said the chiefs who had camped at the Blue Roof since Mugabe died early this month were reportedly given their marching orders on Thursday night after a meeting between the traditional leaders, Grace’s sisters and Mnangagwa. They then left the lofty home on Friday morning.
Grace has not set foot at the national shrine where government is constructing a mausoleum for her husband, whose body is still holed up at the family’s imposing mansion in Borrowdale.
She has allegedly refused to let the veteran nationalist’s body lie in state at One Commando Barracks or at private mortuaries, a development which has further strained her relations with other family members.
“What I know is that it’s the Zvimba chiefs who marked that grave (mausoleum) and Grace has not even set her foot there, so clearly that feud is not a lie. The people who have been taking the lead are Zvimba chiefs and they have not been at Blue Roof since weekend,” a government source said.
“If she can’t allow them to keep the body and preferring to stay at home with her dead husband, what makes you think she will let them bury him at the National Heroes Acre where the army and his enemies in government have access?” a close family member asked. Newsday
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