Governor offers Zimbabwe First Lady more farms
By KITSEPILE NYATHI in Harare | Friday, February 1 2013 at 12:13
Days after Zimbabwe’s First Lady Grace Mugabe caused an outcry by taking
over a private farming estate, provincial governor has offered her more land
to expand her projects that include an orphanage and proposed university.
President Robert Mugabe’s wife recently took over 1,600 hectares of Mazowe
estate, which is owned by Interfresh, one of the biggest orange producers in
the country.
Speaking at the official opening of the Amai Grace Mugabe Junior School on
Thursday, Mashonaland Central governor Martin Dinha said they were not
ashamed to give the First Family vast tracts of land.
The family already runs the Grace Mugabe Children’s Home and Gushungo Dairy
Project on adjacent farms seized from white commercial farmers during the
government’s land reform programme.
They are also reported to own several farms across the country over and
above President Mugabe’s repeated threats to repossess land from multiple
farm owners.
Wifely dream
“I would like to thank you for building this school in Mazowe,” Mr Dinha
told the veteran ruler and his wife.
“We offered you land and we will continue to offer you land for other
projects if you want it.
“We will do it in broad daylight and we are not ashamed of it.
“Detractors can say what they want, they can write what they want but this
is our land in Mashonaland Central and we will do what we want with it.”
The school that has an initial enrolment of 100 pupils was built by the
Chinese.
President Mugabe said his wife had a dream to uplift the standards of
education in Zimbabwe, which boasts of the highest literacy rates in Africa.
“I want to quickly add that it is a happy day for our whole family, who have
followed and helped their dear mother as she determinedly pressed on with
the project that today is our pride,” he said.
“I can assure you that the First Lady invested large amounts of time and
study on this project.”
About 600 fulltime and seasonal workers will be left jobless after the
seizure of the Interfresh property.