Johannesburg – Both of President Robert Mugabe’s sons are living in South Africa, according to a privately owned Zimbabwean newspaper.
The Zimbabwe Independent said on Friday Robert Mugabe jr who had been living in his parents’ rented mansion in Dubai, and the youngest son, Bellarmine, 20, had moved to Joburg.
The Mugabe family and the Zimbabwean government have not confirmed this information, nor where their sons are studying, if they are studying.
Both young men failed to pass their school-leaving examinations in Harare as Robert jr, a top-class basketball player, did not succeed in his final A-level examinations at expensive private school St John’s College in Harare. He was believed to be studying in Dubai and it is not clear why he left the United Arab Emirates.
When he was 16, Bellarmine was expelled from St George’s, the prestigious Catholic boys’ school he attended in Harare. He allegedly finished his schooling at home.
Mugabe’s eldest child, Bona is now married with a baby. She qualified as an accountant at a college in Hong Kong but has never worked and lives in her father’s former home in Harare.
First lady Grace Mugabe’s oldest son, Russell Goreraza, 33, divorced with one child, lives in Harare and was involved in an allegedly troubled gold-mining venture and was found guilty two years ago of culpable homicide when he was speeding in Harare in his luxury car and killed a pedestrian.
He and Bona Mugabe’s husband, Simba Chikore, a one-time pilot who now heads bankrupt Air Zimbabwe, recently took over several houses in Harare on behalf of Grace, who claims in court she is trying to recover about R20 million from a Dubai diamond dealer.
The properties belong to Jamal Ahmed and according to what he told the Harare High Court, Goreraza and Chikore took possession of his homes and other buildings he claims he owns in Harare.
Ahmed’s employees claimed they were evicted from one of his properties by the pair. The police have since told the high court that they seized the homes as they are investigating Ahmed.
Ahmed says he sold Grace Mugabe a diamond last year and had it cut and set. He says she paid for the stone from her Harare bank account but refused to accept delivery of it and demanded the money be paid back to her account in Dubai. Chikore, according to the Zimbabwe Independent, is now taking over some of his father-in-law’s security, in addition to control of Air Zimbabwe.
This week police and soldiers continued to evict scores of people from mud-and-grass homes built on land near Harare, which Grace Mugabe claimed from a Zimbabwe company. The evictions continued even after the high court ordered them to stop last month.
Grace recently spent about R60m on a large piece of land in a top Harare suburb.
The Mugabes have taken over about 15 formerly white-owned or company-owned farms in Zimbabwe and are the largest private landowners in the country. The president bought his first farm in 2000.