Dubbed 'Gucci' Grace, the wife of deposed Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe is renowned for her extravagant spending sprees around the world. The 'First Lady of Shopping', currently under house arrest with her husband, 93, at their 25-bedroom Blue Roof mansion in Harare following a military coup, has lavished millions on bling, including £200,000 on a diamond-studded headboard. The 52-year-old, widely loathed in Zimbabwe where seven in ten are in poverty, is pictured on a shopping trip in Paris, France (left), in 2003, showing off her jewellery in Harare in September and with her husband in the Zimbabwean capital in 2008.
She is widely loathed in Zimbabwe, where seven in ten are stuck in poverty. The population has been incensed by reports of a lavish lifestyle that once saw her spend £120,000 on one shopping spree in Paris.
The couple's children appear to have acquired their parents' taste for luxury. Their youngest son Chatunga posted a video on Snapchat showing himself pouring £200-a-bottle Armand de Brignac Champagne over a £45,000 watch on a night out in South Africa. He bragged that he owned the timepiece because 'daddy runs the whole country'.
Her son by her first marriage, Russell Goreraza, took delivery of two Rolls-Royce limousines in September.
Grace, a former chicken seller, began an affair with Robert Mugabe while working as one of his typists and while his first wife, Sally, was terminally ill.
Mugabe's marriage to Grace in 1996, dubbed the 'Wedding of the Century' in Zimbabwe, was an extravagant Catholic affair. And each decade of the old dictator's life was marked with ever more expensive partying — his 90th year being marked by a celebration costing £600,000.
During one bout of retail therapy in Paris in 2002, the First Lady - known in her homeland as the First Shopper - spent more than £120,000 in department stores.
And by 2014 her spending on luxury goods was running at £2 million a year. That year's shopping list included 12 diamond rings, 62 pairs of Ferragamo shoes, 33 pairs made by Gucci and an £80,000 Rolex watch.
After one trip to London, where she stayed in a suite at Claridge's, Mrs Mugabe was asked how she could justify spending so much on designer shoes.
'I have very narrow feet, so I can only wear Ferragamo,' came the reply.
The Mugabes were banned from Europe in 2002, depriving Grace of favourite haunts such as Harrods, but she continued to spend in China and the Middle East.
A diamond ring purchased to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary cost her £900,000, although she later sued the dealer in question for failure to deliver.
In a further act of retaliation, the First Lady threatened to seize the businessman's properties in Zimbabwe — hardly a new tactic for a woman who has managed to 'purchase' no fewer than five dairy farms with funds that simply appeared out of nowhere.
No expense was spared when Mugabe's only daughter, Bona, married in 2014.
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| Mugabe's marriage to Grace in 1996, dubbed the 'Wedding of the Century' in Zimbabwe, was an extravagant Catholic affair. And each decade of the old dictator's life was marked with ever more expensive partying — his 90th year being marked by a celebration costing £600,000 |
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