Zimbabwe’s free-spending first family this week upped their lavish game when Russell Goreraza, Grace Mugabe’s first-born son from an earlier marriage, imported two luxury cars worth an estimated $560,000.
The move angered many impoverished Zimbabwean families who are battling to put food on the table in a country with rampant unemployment and worsening poverty.
Goreraza, 34, this week imported two Rolls-Royce Ghosts, estimated to cost $280 000 each before import duties, from Europe.
Zimbabwe’s former finance minister and opposition leader Tendai Biti expressed outrage over the first family’s latest extravagance.
“Nearly 80% of Zimbabweans are living in extreme poverty and we have this insane first family, the Mobutu Sese Sekos of our time, squandering taxpayers’ money on houses for Grace in South Africa and now Rolls-Royces for her son,” Biti said.
Biti added that Goreraza, like Grace’s other sons, was unable to pass a single school-leaving exam but, through his mother’s position, had established some links into the mining industry and a “fantastic” lifestyle.
Goreraza is heard telling pals in a video that has gone viral that his next vehicle, due to arrive in Harare shortly, is an Aston Martin.
Biti questioned the logic of importing such luxury cars to navigate the treacherous Zimbabwean roads. “This family are toxic parasites. What is Russell going to do with his Rolls-Royces on the potholed roads around Harare? What kind of a person would want to be seen in a Rolls-Royce among such unprecedented poverty in Zimbabwe? He must be mad,” Biti said.
Outspoken Zanu-PF legislator Justice Mayor Wadyajena echoed Biti’s scorn of Goreraza’s “pricey acquisitions”, tweeting a picture of the sleek Rolls-Royce, with a stinging caption: “Only the connected thrive in a country where youth are begging for opportunities to earn an honest living.”