Mugabe moves in to luxury mansion

d economy, Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has moved into a multi-million dollar retirement palace that has been built over the past five years. The spread, with 25 en-suite bathrooms, has cost in excess of US$26 million to build in a country where most people earn less than the equivalent of US$11 a month. But the move into the palace – three times the size of the official presidential residence, State House – could be a sign that 82-year-old Mugabe is finally preparing for retirement. He has said he intends retiring in 2008, though speculation has been intense this year that he will amend the constitution to extend his rule until 2010. The mansion is also indicative of the corruption and extravaganza of good living Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) government has indulged in as the country crumbles around them. University of Zimbabwe political scientist John Makumbe, a member of the anti-corruption group Transparency International, said the palace demonstrated Mugabe’s “insensitivity to the plight of the people he leads”.
“He is happy to live like a monarch while the rest of the country is mired in poverty. It just shows that corruption begins at the top of the government because Mugabe’s salary of roughly 57,000 dollars a year and allowances for the past 26 years he has been in power cannot build such a house. But also that could show you that he is preparing for his retirement,” said Makumbe. Apart from the costs of building the palace, many millions more have been spent on decoration and furniture and landscaping its lake-strewn grounds. Arab artists brought to Zimbabwe spent a year decorating the arching ceilings. For most Zimbabweans, Mugabe’s relocation to the mansion is proof that government profligacy starts with the presidency. “It pains me. That house has no place in country were millions are starving and jobless,” said Jonathan Nhekwe, who barely survives by selling cigarettes on the streets of Harare. His pain is shared by millions of other Zimbabweans who struggle to survive each day in a country where inflation reached 1200 per cent in May and where 80 per cent of people of working age are unemployed. It is a slap in the face for the more than one million people still living in the open after their homes were destroyed a year ago in Mugabe’s Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Clean Out the Filth), an alleged urban renewal scheme which is believed to have been aimed at supporters of the Mugabe opposition.
The palace, 26 kilometres north of central Harare in the plush suburb of Borrowdale, has been built by Energo Projekt, a Serbian company with a long history of construction in Zimbabwe and which also built Zanu (PF)’s skyscraper party headquarters in Harare. Glazed midnight blue tiles covering the roof have been donated by China, a major investor in Zimbabwe following the retreat of western businesses. Mugabe has said the palace is a gift to him from the ruling party out of gratitude for leading the country to independence and then governing it since independence in 1980. In a rare interview with Britain’s Sky News, Mugabe admitted there were corrupt individuals in his party, but when asked if he himself was corrupt replied, “Oh come on, come on, come on. We have had assistance, of course. Some countries have donated. They have got some timber from Malaysia, thanks to my good friend, former prime minister Mahathir [Mohamad].”
The area of Borrowdale where the palace is located has been declared a security zone with a 24 hour guard provided by the state police and the army, who, sources say, are under instructions to shoot to kill any suspicious people approaching the complex. This is the third luxury residence that Mugabe has built and the fifth he has owned since he came to power. In the early 1990s, Mugabe caused a public uproar after he used taxpayer’s funds to build a magnificent mansion at Kutama, the village 80 km northwest of Harare where the president was born. In the late 1990s, Mugabe’s wife Grace, 40 years his junior, used government funds meant to construct houses for the poor to build a 30-bedroom house that came to be known as “Graceland” and which was later bought by Libyan ruler Muammar Qadaffi. The first family also has a 29-room farmhouse house 64 km northwest of the capital on the magnificent Iron Mask Estate, allocated to them during the wave of expulsions of white commercial farmers from their properties from 2001 onwards. The luxury farmhouse and its rich pastures were confiscated from Eva and John Matthews, both in their seventies, who were given 48 hours to leave after a visit by Grace Mugabe, accompanied by police, soldiers and youth militiamen. Mugabe also has a country retreat in Nyanga, a resort area in the Eastern Highlands guarded all-year round by the army. It is, however, the Borrowdale house that has most irked ordinary people and attracted the fiercest criticism. Mugabe is not leaving his security to chance. The government is giving notices to people with houses around the palace to sell up and find homes elsewhere. – IWPR