Grace Mugabe

[Rever]

Grace Ntombizodwa was born in Benoni, South Africa[9] to migrant parents as the fourth of five children in the family.[10] In 1970, she moved to Rhodesia, to live with her mother, Idah Marufu in Chivhu while her father stayed and worked in South Africa to support his family.[10] She attended primary school in Chivhu and then the Kriste Mambo secondary school in Manicaland.[10]

She married air force pilot Stanley Goreraza[11] and they had a son, Russell Goreraza, born in 1984 when Grace was 19 years old.[12][13]

Whilst working as secretary to the president, Robert Mugabe, she became his mistress at a time when she was still married to Stanley Goreraza – and had two children, Bona born in 1988, named after Mugabe's mother, and Robert Peter Jr.[14]

After the death of Mugabe's first wife, Sally Hayfron, the couple were married in an extravagant Catholic mass titled the "Wedding of the Century" by the Zimbabwe press.[14][15] At the time of their marriage, Grace Marufu was 31 and Robert Mugabe was 72 years old.

Their second child, Robert Mugabe Jr, was born in the early 1990s.[16] In 1997, she gave birth to the couple's third child, Chatunga Berlamine Mugabe.[17]