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Meluleki Moyo
OF all the despised women to have graced mother earth, history will cry partiality without the mention of one arrogant, self-centred and hence unpopular French queen called Marie Antoinette.
Having been privileged to be married to King Loius XVI at a very tender age, she became a symbol of instability in her husband’s political career. Her restlessness arguably had a hand in the collapse of that regime in the late 1700s, as France went through some political overhaul through an inevitable and imminent revolution.
Added to other errors of commission and omission, influenced by his young and inexperienced Queen, King Louis XVI threw his reputable advisors like Necker under the bus. This proved costly not only for the King but for the entire regime. Historical and academic accounts postulate that Marie Antoinette’s political intriguing and henpecking of Louis XVI was largely to blame for much of her husband’s poor decision making, bringing his political career to a sad end.
The ‘diamond necklace affair’
The unfortunate 1785-1786 incident ruined Marie Antoinette’s reputation a great deal as she participated in a crime to defraud the crown jewellers of the cost of a very expensive diamond necklace. The affair of the diamond necklace made Marie Antoinette even more unpopular, and malicious utterances about her made her a greater liability to her husband. She was never able to shake off the idea in the public imagination that she had perpetrated an extravagant fraud for her own frivolous ends.
The affair is historically significant as one of the events that led to the French populace’s disillusionment with the monarchy, which, among other causes, eventually precipitated the French Revolution. Added to this show of extravagancy, the French present day version of a First Lady lived in the comfort of a multitude of maids and servants. Her profligate spending on costumes, jewellery, trinkets and trivialities pushed the nation to the verge of bankruptcy, but she never cared.
Political intriguing, a legacy tainted!
Madam Deficit, as she became known owing to her extravagancy, showed disregard for the suffering in as much as she showed disregard and disrespect for those in higher positions and appointed by her husband Louis XVI.
When the French were in dire need of bread, their staple diet, she arrogantly told them to try cake. She also had profound hatred for some officials who she even humiliated in public. These included among others, Jacques Necker who the under influence King dismissed and was forced to recall after eight days due to public outrage.
Madame de Genlis, Madame du Barry and of all people, Marquis de Lafayette, the famous general of the American Revolution, also politically survived at the mercy of the Queen.
“He would sacrifice anything for the sake of popularity”, Marie Antoinette is said to have once remarked about Lafayette. Moreover, because of his actions, in the National Assembly and because of his role in the National Guard, she felt Lafayette was too ambitious, disloyal and for these reasons, she looked at him with disgust and disdain.
Those who enjoyed proximity to the Queen did not like him as well. A member of the Queen’s inner circle is reported to have once called him a “rebel” and a “brigand”. Tired of wallowing in poverty amid a deteriorating economic situation also necessitated by gross royal extravagancy, the French masses lost respect for the once considered divine King of the house of the Bourbons and among other signs of losing patience, they marched to the palace.
The ensuing events even saw the government placing the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789. After all had been said and done, a monarchy was shamefully pushed off power. As well borrowing from the world of fiction, centuries later came the too real-to-be-fictitious
The Game of Thrones where Queen Cersei, a power hungry woman, married to Robert and with three children could reach any levels, even appalling, for the sake of power. In her quest for power, she successfully destroyed her husband’s loyal ally Ned Stark. She would stop at nothing to sit on the iron throne. The series also features deposed queens married to formally powerful men, spoilt children and heirs who feel that it’s the God given right to recklessly spend the wealth of the land.
Queen Cersei never liked her son’s girlfriends and in one of the seasons, she beat one of them up. Meanwhile, in opposition is a dead man walking, trying to raise an army of the dead to also rule the kingdom.
Dr Amai, diamond ring, G40
Married to then President Mugabe at a tender age at a colourful wedding ceremony in the capital in 1996 following the death of Amai Sally Mugabe, the young Grace Ntombizodwa Marufu, from a distance seemed the future motherly mother of the nation.
Nobody, including former president Mugabe himself, ever envisaged that behind that beauty lay some colours that would turn controversial later.
Coupled with an array of other factors, Zimbabwe gradually departed from normalcy.
“We are going to create a special wheelchair for President Mugabe until he rules to 100 years, because that is what we want,” once declared the former First Lady who also scored a first in the academic world, studying towards and attaining a PhD from the University of Zimbabwe at lightning speed.
“Gucci Grace” as her critics called her, owing to her expensive taste in fine things of this world, she was once involved in a bitter $1. 2 million diamond ring wrangle with a Lebanese businessman, Jamal Joseph Ahmed. Mrs Mugabe claimed to have paid the Lebanese businessman for the diamond ring in 2015, but was supplied with an “inferior ring” worth just USD $30 000. This she would refuse to accept, prompting her to approach the courts of law.
Amid a deteriorating economic situation, the details of the ring purchase proved damaging to the First Family in the public eye. Despite the growing hardships faced by ordinary people, Mrs Mugabe even went on to acquire properties in Harare and Johannesburg, while her son Russel, by a first marriage, is reported to have imported two top of the range Rolls-Royce limousines.
Critics say Grace Mugabe’s amateurish meddling in politics contributed to a sad end to former president Mugabe’s decorated political career. Among other charges, former president Mugabe was consequently accused by the ruling Zanu-PF party, a party he had led for decades, of allowing his wife to usurp constitutional powers when she was not an elected official.
Although she oversaw a number of orphanages across the country, Dr Grace Mugabe also had critics who accused her of showing utter disregard for the suffering after she displaced and evacuated people from resettlement areas as she sought to expand her business ventures.
Her seemingly disruptive conduct even went regional. Frustrating Zimbabwe and South Africa’s diplomatic relations, she some time this year, assaulted South African model, Gabriella Engels. The beauty’s only crime was that she had been found with the former First Family’s sons who had gone wayward, notorious for flaunting wealth, whilst the rest of the youths walloped in abject unemployment propelled poverty.
In recent years, with the former First Lady and her team in charge of proceedings, harbouring political ambitious had become a next-to-treasonous offence and those found guilty could even be accused of witchcraft and wizardry. Insults were hurled at civil servants. The esteemed vice presidents were reduced to nothing at public rallies with the “Meet the People” rallies being specifically set aside for political opponents in the party. As all the drama unfolded with former vice president Joice Mujuru out of the way, President Emmerson Mnangagwa never envisaged that another series of rallies to be dubbed the “Youth Interface” were in store for him. The army was also not spared denigration this time around. But as history has it, the rallies never served their purpose.
Working in cohorts with equally ambitious individuals known as G40, critics say Grace Mugabe influenced the former president to throw his long time allies under the bus. Despite their liberation credentials, the political casualties probably haplessly rhymed to the slain Lucky Dube’s lyrics:
“Didn’t I raise my fists enough for you?
I guess I can’t pat myself on the shoulder for a job well done.
Dodging bullets in the streets,
I was there, Now that you got what you wanted; you don’t even know my name.
It’s so funny, we don’t talk anymore.”
A mass purging of liberation heroes had become the order of the day and history conscience Zimbabweans would not accept this. Peaceful protests ensued, and thanks to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces for allowing Zimbabweans to peacefully exercise their democratic rights. Consequently, Zimbabweans took to the streets and to the presidential “Blue Roof” palace to peacefully persuade former president Mugabe to call it a day as a way of restoring normalcy.
Patience had been lost; a beaming legacy had just been tainted too. This Ebenezer moment has taken collective efforts in the national interest. The opposition resurrected. The civic society, students and religious organisations all came out in full force to ensure that after all had been said and done, legacy including that of former president Mugabe, was restored.
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Online Reporter