Mugabe told Sally about extra marital affair with Grace

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has said he revealed his affair with Grace to late wife Sally who "accepted the new relationship" before she died from kidney failure in 1992.

The veteran leader made the revelations in a candid two-and-a-half hour interview with South African broadcaster Dally Tambo for his People of the South series which will be broadcast by the SABC early next month.

Tambo was granted rare access into the home life of the First Family and with it, some insights into the personal life and thinking of the man who has run Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

Mugabe married Grace in 1996 but started the relationship with his former secretary while first wife Sally was terminally ill.

Asked about the affair, the veteran leader suggested that it was part-inspired by practical considerations.

"It was not just the fact that one was attracted (to her)," he said.

"After Sally was gone it was necessary for me to look for someone and, even as Sally was still going through her last few days, although it might have appeared to some as cruel, I said to myself well, it's not just myself needing children, my mother has all the time said, ah, am I going to die without seeing grandchildren?

"So I decided to make love to her. She happened to be one of the nearest and she was a divorcee herself, and so it was. We got our first child when my mother was still alive."

Probed on whether he had told Sally about the relationship, Mugabe said: "I did tell her and she just kept quiet and said fine but she did ask, 'Do you still love me?' I said yes. And she said, 'Oh, fine'."