{The wife of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has claimed that the author of a book on the 90-year-old leader committed suicide as a direct consequence of her prayers that God punishes detractors of her husband’s regime.}<\/p>\n
South African native journalist Heidi Holland died in 2012, four years after the publishing of her acclaimed portrait of the Zimbabwean president: Dinner with Mugabe.<\/p>\n
Grace Mugabe, 49, told political supporters at rally in the village of Bindura, north of Harare, that Holland was found hanged weeks after she had cursed her.<\/p>\n
“There was a white lady who wrote a book castigating President Robert Mugabe,” the First Lady was quoted as saying by local newspaper NewsDay.<\/p>\n
“I held the book and prayed to God to deal with her. She committed suicide a month later.”<\/p>\n
Dinner with Mugabe gave a critical insight on the Zimbabwean freedom fighter turned dictator, through a series of interviews with people who had intimate knowledge of him.<\/p>\n
Born in Johannesburg to a British father and a Swiss mother, Holland grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), then a British colony, and worked as a reporter for numerous US and British papers.<\/p>\n
Grace Mugabe is seen as an increasingly possible successor to her husband at the helm of Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
Last week, she threatened one of her main contenders, Vice-president Joice Mujuru, with expulsion from the ruling Zanu-PF party, signalling a growing power struggle over the succession to the old leader amid concerns overs his failing health.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe’s First Lady drew public anger last month after she was awarded a PhD only two months after she enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe, where her husband is chancellor.<\/p>\n
IBTIMES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{The wife of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has claimed that the author of a book on the 90-year-old leader committed suicide as a direct consequence of her prayers that God punishes detractors of her husband’s regime.} South African native journalist Heidi Holland died in 2012, four years after the publishing of her acclaimed portrait of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000054596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-16964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000054596,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16964.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16964.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16964.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16964.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16964.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16964.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000054596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16964"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=16964"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=16964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}