Sources close to Not the Mail & Guardian have revealed that a luxury wine estate near Stellenbosch, including its winery and classic Cape Dutch homestead, has been secretly acquired by the Department of Foreign Affairs. The estate and its buildings are being prepared and will be set aside as a retirement home for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
It is understood that certain alterations and additions, mainly to do with increased security, are being installed. These are believed to include the erection of a 6m high-tension electric fence and armed sentry posts.
The reported cost of the estate Rust Ain Kalmheidt (original High Dutch for rest in calmness) was in excess of R32-million. The purchase was approved by the Cabinet as a ‘gesture of goodwill to one of Africa’s bravest fighters and most strident voices against the evils of colonialism”. It is believed the Cabinet was unanimous in its decision to purchase the property.
By the time the Not the M&G went to press there had been no response to questions put by fax to the Department of Foreign Affairs. One of these questions was whether the purchase of a retirement residence for Mugabe was necessary in the light of his already having commissioned a R72-million rand luxury retirement palace outside Harare.
A Not the M&G reporter telephoned the Department of Foreign Affairs. A man, identifying himself as a junior member of the department, said he had picked up a phone entirely by mistake when he heard it ‘going on and on ringing”.
Asked about the purchase of the wine estate he said he had no clearance to speak on behalf of the department or the minister. ‘All the important foreign affairs people are overseas on another one of Thabo Mbeki’s state visits. We haven’t seen them for months.”
Pressed, he said that, speaking entirely off the record, he understood that the opinion in the department was that in Zimbabwe there would always be a threat to the personal safety of Mugabe from ‘those traitorous elements in Zimbabwean society who refuse to acknowledge the statesmanlike and visionary leadership of Mugabe”, who he described as ‘a titan of the African soil”.
There had to be somewhere completely safe for him, and of a style appropriate and fitting to his eminence among world leaders. The foreign affairs staff member refused to give his name.
Asked to comment on the purchase of the wine estate, Douglas Gibson of the Democratic Alliance said he would do so as soon as he’d got in a new supply of Extra Strength Prozac.