- When Robert Mugabe married Grace Marufu, his glamorous
former secretary, in August 1996, he resolved to provide her with a home
fit for a first lady. Now the 32-room mansion he built her on the outskirts
of the capital, Harare, could be turned into the Libyan embassy, or "people's
bureau" - the latest bizarre sign of growing links between Muammar
Gadaffi and the embattled Zimbabwean leader.
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- Security sources revealed this weekend that the brown
brick building - nicknamed Gracelands - is among 20 properties bought by
the Libyan leader in recent months in Zimbabwe.
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- Oppposition politicians fear they could be used as safe-houses
for thugs supplied by the Libyan dictator to help intimidate opponents
of his comrade-in-arms and, in the process, enhance Gadaffi's own influence
at the opposite end of Africa.
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- The sale will not only provide Libya with by far the
largest embassy building in Zimbabwe, dwarfing the British and American
missions; it will also provide considerable personal gain for Mugabe.
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- The house was built for Grace using nearly £100,000
from a fund set up ostensibly to provide low-cost housing for junior civil
servants. The first lady was deeply embarrassed when the press found out
and refused to use the home after it was finished in 1997.
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- It was then put on the market for £350,000 but
found no takers - until Gadaffi turned up and offered £100,000 more.
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- It was not the first example of his recent largesse to
Mugabe's pariah state: last year, unable to pay for fuel and dogged by
power cuts and civil unrest, the Zimbabwean leader made several successful
trips to Tripoli with his begging bowl.
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- Analysts have always noted there are few free lunches
as far as Gadaffi is concerned; he sees his role in Zimbabwe as his pathway
to developing diplomatic clout across black Africa.
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- To keep Mugabe sweet, he advanced him a loan of £70m,
and then made a special trip to last month's Organisation of African Unity
summit in Lusaka - the first he had attended since 1977 - to give all-out
support to Mugabe's land-grabbing and anti- white policies. So large was
Libya's delegation that Gadaffi even upstaged Nelson Mandela, the former
South African president.
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- From Lusaka, Gadaffi then drove in a 150-car motorcade
to Harare, where his army of amazon women bodyguards virtually took over
the capital. In an extraordinary television appearance, he announced that
Africa was for the Africans and that whites must go back to Europe, or
be allowed to stay on only as servants.
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- Gadaffi also promised Mugabe an extra £418m in
fuel supplies, on top of a £640,000 election contribution to Mugabe's
ruling Zanu-PF party. More sinister was Gadaffi's command to Harare's Indian
Muslims for a jihad, or holy war, in support of Mugabe's anti-white policies.
Otherwise, he warned, he would bring in the notorious Pagad movement from
South Africa, a fundamentalist Muslim vigilante group linked to murders
in the Cape, including bomb attacks on American- backed enterprises such
as the Planet Hollywood restaurant.
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- New embassy: Gadaffi's 32-room mansion in Harare. Photogaph:
Sarah Jane Poole
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- Most of Harare's hard-working Muslims were aghast, and
they fear their subsequent failure to take up the jihad is the reason for
a spate of attacks against their businesses by Zanu's dreaded youth wing.
"For heaven's sake, we all do business with whites all the time,"
said one. "It's obvious we're being punished for not complying."
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- Gadaffi has also left behind two extra bodyguards for
Mugabe and four specialist "co-ordinators". They are believed
to have experience in the training and handling of death squads, which
it is feared could be based in the houses acquired by Gadaffi. The properties
are strategically located around the country, with four in Harare and one
in every region.
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- The squads are said to have a list of assassination targets,
including politicians from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) and troublesome journalists.
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- Pagad activists have already been linked to an assassination
attempt against Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, in which his car was
ambushed during the recent Bindura by-election.
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- Tsvangirai alluded to the squads last week, when the
local independent press revealed that when Gadaffi's motorcade lumbered
north on its return from Harare last month, the Libyan leader stopped off
in Chinhoyi, a white farming area 70 miles northwest of Harare, to give
an incendiary speech calling on locals to throw out the whites.
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- It is difficult to know how far the ripples of Gadaffi's
intervention will spread, but statistics show Zimbabwe is becoming increasingly
unsafe.
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- The respected Zimbabwean Human Rights Forum recently
published a 46-page report in which it details a catalogue of state- sponsored
terror, including assaults with whips, batons, electricity, water and even
melted plastic, dripped on to victims' torsos and genitalia.
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- Nothing in Zimbabwe now lies beyond Mugabe's tentacles
of terror; even the genteel realm of the Zimbabwean Cricket Union is being
subjected to the black-power principle. Those who run it are now under
strict instructions to pick more blacks for the national side, which had
been scheduled to play England later this year.
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- Mugabe is sufficiently hard pressed to be willing to
make alliances with a lexicon of pariah states. Besides Libya, the ranks
of his foreign supporters have dwindled to China - which last month extended
a further £2.57m loan to him - North Korea, Iraq and a scattering
of mainly impoverished African states. These include Sudan, where Mugabe
has his eye on oil reserves.
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- The Sudanese, like Gadaffi, are delighted to find a friend
in need, and confirm that negotiations are under way.
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