Grace Mugabe snubs ANC invite

President Robert Mugabe's wife Grace, who is the women's league secretary, has snubbed an invite to attend a women's league national congress by South Africa's ruling ANC this week.

Instead, Grace's deputy in the Zanu-PF women's league, Eunice Nomthandazo Sandi-Moyo, who is also the minister of State for Provincial Affairs for Bulawayo, will attend on her behalf.

While the Zanu-PF women's league spokesperson Monica Mutsvangwa was unreachable for comment yesterday, sources said the Zanu-PF wing had already communicated to the ANC women's league president Angie Motshekga that Sandi-Moyo will act as Grace's proxy at the congress.

Motshekga, who had invited Grace, had earlier told the South African Broadcasting Corporation: "We have only invited former liberation movements like Zanu-PF.

"So we expect Grace Mugabe to come and we also expect Frelimo (Mozambican ruling party) to come."

She emphasised: "It is only former liberation movements that we have invited to come.

"Some of them, even if they are not in government, we invited them politically because they are former friends of the ANC."

Insiders said the decision to deploy Sandi-Moyo was to avert Grace's propensity to put her foot in her mouth.

"Amai's agile mind comes with a loose tongue that cannot always be properly restrained," one official said, adding she was a sucker for a microphone and was notorious for veering off prepared speeches and shooting from the hip.

Diplomatic relations  between the neighbouring countries have been strained by the recent outbreak of xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals, including Zimbabweans, in South Africa, with Mugabe openly protesting the slow handling of the chaos.