Mugabe to retire in style

2003-08-27 21:06

Barnie Louw

Cape Town - South African experts will apparently assist in the final stages of completion of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's luxury retirement villa, worth about R74m, outside Harare.

A report in the British newspaper, Daily Telegraph, on Wednesday claimed that South Africans would be doing the landscaping and interior decorating of the split-level house, comprising an area of about one and a half rugby fields. Two artificial lakes on the southern border of the property are being filled at present.

The house with its 25 bedrooms in Borrowdale Brook Lane, an upmarket suburb in northern Harare, is being completed in haste because Mugabe allegedly wants to move in there when he retires.

Rumours have been circulating for a while that Mugabe would step down after the Zanu-PF congress in December or after his 80th birthday in February next year.

The retirement villa is about three times the size of Mugabe's current official residence and offices. Each of the rooms in the house apparently has a different theme, for example an Arabic room, Chinese rooms and a section in the French style. It is not known whether there is a British room.

Four artisans from Morocco have apparently been carving the dome of the banquet hall for more than a year. The dome can be compared to the dome decorations of Saddam Hussain's palaces in Iraq.

To protect all of these luxuries, at least four armed policemen are patrolling the property's parameter day and night. Agents of the Central Intelligence Organisation are apparently on hand to scare away curious passers-by.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Mugabe's presidential salary would not be enough to cover the maintenance of his palace.

Earlier this year, Mugabe raised his annual salary by nearly 600% from Z$3m to Z$20.2m. This increase is double the Zimbabwean inflation rate of about 300%.

Mugabe's personal European assets were estimated at about R6.8 bn in January last year.

- Die Burger