Zimbabwe’s Grace Mugabe due in South Africa court over assault

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Gabriella Engels

Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, is due in court in South Africa following allegations of an assault, South Africa’s police minister says.

She has “handed herself over to the police” but is not under arrest, Fikile Mbalula said.

South African model Gabriella Engels, 20, has accused Mrs Mugabe of hitting her on the head with an extension cord during a confrontation at a hotel.

She released an image of a face injury online. Mrs Mugabe has not commented.

Ms Engels accused Mrs Mugabe, 52, of hitting her after finding her with her two sons in a hotel room in Sandton, a plush suburb north of Johannesburg, the BBC’s Pumza Fihlani reports.

The attack is said to have happened on Sunday evening.

What does Engels say?

In a phone interview for South Africa’s News24 news site, she said she and a friend had been visiting the sons, Robert and Chatunga, at the Capital 20 West Hotel.

A bodyguard asked her and her friend to wait in a separate room, after which the assault occurred, she said.

“When Grace entered I had no idea who she was,” she told News24.

“She walked in with an extension cord and just started beating me with it. She flipped and just kept beating me with the plug. Over and over. I had no idea what was going on. I was surprised… I needed to crawl out of the room before I could run away.

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Reuters

“Her ten bodyguards just stood there watching, no-one did anything, no-one tried to help me.”

“There was blood everywhere,” she added. “Over my arms, in my hair, everywhere.”

What do the police say?

In a statement, they confirmed that on Monday an unnamed 20-year-old South African woman had registered a “case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm”.

She was “allegedly assaulted by a prominent woman at a hotel in Sandton,” they said, without naming Mrs Mugabe.

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Who is Grace Mugabe?

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AFP

• Began affair with Robert Mugabe, 41 years her senior, while working as a typist in state house
• Mr Mugabe later said his first wife Sally, who was terminally ill at the time, knew and approved of the relationship
• Married Mr Mugabe, her second husband, in 1996 in an extravagant ceremony. They have three children
• Nicknamed “Gucci Grace” by her critics who accuse her of lavish spending
• Along with her husband, is subject to EU and US sanctions, including travel bans
• Praised by supporters for her charitable work and founding of an orphanage
• Received a PhD in September 2014, a month after being nominated to take over the leadership of the Zanu-PF women’s league

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Why was she in South Africa?

She was due to be treated for an ankle injury, sustained during a road accident last month, according to Zimbabwean media.

It is not clear whether she was travelling on a diplomatic or a normal passport.

Mrs Mugabe is seen as a staunch defender of her husband, 93, and is the leader of the powerful women’s league of Zimbabwe’s governing Zanu-PF party.

Zimbabwean Information Minister Christopher Mushowe told the BBC he was unaware of the allegations against her.

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After Son Is ID’d At Supremacist Rally, His Father Responds Publicly

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched in a rally in Charlottesville, Va., are being identified online — and the family of one man says they no longer have anything to do with him.

Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched in a rally in Charlottesville, Va., are being identified online — and the family of one man says they no longer have anything to do with him.

Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Pearce Tefft wrote a letter to members of his community in Fargo, N.D., to set the record straight about his family and the current state of his relationship to Peter Tefft, calling his son “an avowed white nationalist” who attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

“I, along with all of his siblings and his entire family, wish to loudly repudiate my son’s vile, hateful and racist rhetoric and actions,” Tefft wrote in a letter to The Forum newspaper. “We do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs. He did not learn them at home.”

As for what Peter Tefft did learn at home, his father says he believes in equality and opened his house to “friends and acquaintances of every race, gender and creed.”

Peter Tefft’s decision to “unlearn” what he was taught has brought heartbreak to the family, Pierce Tefft said. He added that he won’t open his home to his son and that he’s no longer welcome at any family gatherings.

Urging the community not to judge the entire family based on Peter Tefft’s involvement with the neo-Nazi movement, Pierce Tefft said that while his son’s beliefs are his own, they “are bringing hateful rhetoric to his siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews as well as his parents.”

Calling Peter a prodigal son who might someday be welcomed back — but not until he disavows hatred — Pierce Tefft urged, “Please son, renounce the hate, accept and love all.”

Peter Tefft was identified by an online campaign led by the Twitter account “Yes, You’re Racist,” which began working over the weekend to identify the non-hooded white supremacists who appeared at the rally in Charlottesville.

At least one attendee of the Unite the Right rally has lost his job; others have faced intense scrutiny. When it comes to Peter Tefft, his family is making it clear that his beliefs are not theirs — and that he’s not welcome to come back home.

Other members of Tefft’s family have also spoken out. When The Forum reported about Peter Tefft’s involvement with the rally over the weekend, his nephew, Jacob Scott, issued a statement that read in part:

“In brief, we reject him wholly – both him personally as a vile person who has HIMSELF made violent threats against our family, and also his hideous ideology, which we abhor. We are all bleeding-heart liberals who believe in the fundamental equality of all human beings. Peter is a maniac, who has turned away from all of us and gone down some insane internet rabbit-hole, and turned into a crazy nazi. He scares us all, we don’t feel safe around him, and we don’t know how he came to be this way. My grandfather feels especially grieved, as though he has failed as a father.”

In a Facebook post about his uncle, Scott wrote, “Peter, if you are reading this, PLEASE CHANGE YOUR NAME IMMEDIATELY. You are bringing shame and ignominy on your whole family, and causing a great deal of heartbreak and distress for all of us.”

Both Jacob Scott and Pierce Tefft promised that they would resist their relative to the end, with Pierce Tefft telling his son, “you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too.”

That sentiment, echoed by both relatives, was a reference to a joke they said Tefft had told about how fascists treat dissenting opinion.

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