While Zimbabweans starve, Grace shops

WHEN Grace Mugabe needed a new pair of shoes she did what any wife of a dictator would do — she borrowed an airliner from the country’s national fleet, flew to Europe, and picked up a pair of Ferragamo’s.

For years Grace existed in the shadows as Robert Mugabe's secret mistress. Since their hasty, but lavish, wedding in 1996 however, the 38-year-old Grace, 40 years younger than her husband, has stepped into the public eye and shows no signs of wanting to return to the obscurity she endured as a junior secretary in Mugabe's office administration.

Over the last few years Zimbabwe's first lady has gained a reputation in Southern Africa for her famously extravagant shopping expeditions.