Mugabe’s mansion looking a bit blue
● The Mugabes’ Blue Roof mansion in Harare’s exclusive Borrowdale suburb has always been off-limits to ordinary Zimbabweans. Not this week.
For the first time citizens were allowed not only onto the street where the former first family lived, but onto the driveway to show their respects to Robert Mugabe, who died last week and whose funeral service took place yesterday.
A face-saving eleventh-hour deal allowed President Emmerson Mnangagwa to attend Robert Mugabe’s funeral yesterday.
Mugabe left instructions that Mnangagwa, the former acolyte who replaced him after the November 2017 coup that ended his 37-year regime, should not be present at his funeral.
But in tough negotiations with his predecessor’s family, the 76-year-old Zanu-PF leader insisted on hosting fellow African leaders who travelled to Harare for yesterday’s funeral at the national stadium.
He held a series of meetings with the elders from Mugabe’s Gushungo clan and had personal interactions with Mugabe’s family.
As a result, Mnangagwa walked with a veiled Grace Mugabe behind the casket carrying Mugabe’s body, which was draped in the Zimbabwean flag as it was wheeled into the centre of the stadium pitch and placed on a podium decorated with flowers.
Mugabe’s widow still lives in the elaborate Chinese-inspired Blue Roof mansion with its blue roof tiles, imported by the Serbian company that built the place. It reportedly cost US$12m.
At night a big neon sign reading “Gushungo”, Mugabe’s clan name, lights up the entrance.
Thousands of people, some supporters and others merely curious, made their way to the house this week.
“The house looks like one of those places where you find geishas,” said one visitor.
While citizens milled about outside, close family and those with clearance were allowed to the first-floor balcony.
A source close to the Mugabe family said Grace oversaw the building of the mansion while her husband was fighting for political survival in Zanu-PF and in the government.
“It was those years when the [opposition] MDC was strong and some within the party felt he had overstayed, and they fancied their chances. That’s when this home was built as a form of retirement plan, just in case something happened,” said a male family source.
Mugabe moved from Zimbabwe House on Tongogara Street, where he had lived with his first wife, Sally, who died. Once he left Zimbabwe House, it fell into disrepair.
Its leaking roof, faulty plumbing and dilapidated sports facilities were repaired once President Emmerson Mnangagwa came to power after the ousting of Mugabe in 2017.
Now it is the Blue Roof’s turn to feel neglected. The mansion’s maintenance budget has declined. After he was ousted in the coup, Mugabe complained that he couldn’t afford to take care of the house.
Among those who visited the house this week was Raisedon Baya, a playwright and social critic, who said: “The monster house was built for a family of five. This is what corruption looks like. In Zimbabwe it doesn’t hide but stares you in the face, challenging you, taunting you, laughing at the poor.”