President Robert Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba says First Lady Grace Mugabe’s views are her own and not of those her husband. Charamba told New Zimbabwe.Com: “The First Lady is the incoming secretary of the women’s league. That is not an auxiliary post; it’s a substantive post. Why do you want to go beyond herself? Mai Mugabe is an actor in her own right. She is the incoming secretary of the women’s league and that’s not a junior post; it’s a senior post and you can’t hold it until you have certain view points on subject matters. So this idea of trying to reference the President as if Mai Mugabe is an auxiliary player is a bit unfair.” The First Lady has been on a nation-wide tour in which she raffled a lot of feathers by attacking ministers and party leaders who she accused of fanning factionalism. Though she never mentioned her by name, one of her main targets appeared to be Vice-President Joice Mujuru. This led to speculation that she was preparing to take over from her husband and was trying to get rid of Mujuru, the logically successor to Mugabe under the new constitution. But Charamba said Grace could not be aiming for presidency as this would mean fighting her husband. “..if she is gunning for presidency, then she would be at war with her husband….the incumbent President is her husband which means if she has any aspirations to Presidency, she must fight her husband,” he said. Grace’s tour is reported to have opened old wounds and widened the rift between warring factions of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front instead of bringing them back together.
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