Bona Mugabe, the only daughter of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, wed Simba Chikore over the weekend.
Here’s all the facts about the wedding that you need to know:
The Wedding
-Thousands of people attended the ceremony, which was held at the family’s private home in Harare’s Borrowdale neighborhood. One estimate was 4,000 attendees.
-Only media organizations from the state were allowed to cover the ceremony.
-High-profile area leaders attended, including South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Zambia’s Michael Sata, and other former leaders from the region, reported New Zimbabwe.
-Also, billionaires and other businessman, and diplomats, attended the wedding.
-The wedding cost an estimated $5 million.
-Presidential spokesman George Charamba explained why security didn’t want to allow anyone to take pictures. He told New Zimbabwe that the massive private property, which is worth more than $10 million, was built through private donations. He said that “not a single cent came from the state ... That makes the place not just a house for now, but a home for all times for the Mugabes, in and out of office.”
-“That immediately raises security concerns not just in the present, but for all times. So access to the venue of the wedding can neither be random nor unlimited,” he said.
-Neighbors were also advised not to take photographs of guests arriving at the residence.
(Twitter)
(Twitter)
The Husband
-While Bona Mugabe is 24, her new husband is 37.
-Questions are surrounding Chikore, as not much is known about him. He’s supposed to be a pilot but sources in the airline industry said they never heard of him.
-A Zimbabwean based in Doha, though, told the New Zimbabwe that Chikore does work for Qatar Airways and that he attended a party with work colleagues ahead of the wedding.
-A junior officer with the Central Intelligence Organization said that Chikore graduated from St. Johns High and later went to flight school in Chicago in the United States.
-Chikore is known as a workout addict who enjoys bike riding.
-But the officer also said that Chikore “is known for womanising from his high school days and recently involved in a spate of affairs which were glossed over by the team that prepared the final report. ”This man was deemed too old for the first daughter and too tainted to be involved with her. We managed to do surveillance on some of the women involved including some foreign white girls.”
-“Most of the info that we harvested reflected a man who is not fit to be the First Son-in-Law but as fate would have it, the information was heavily massaged to fit the criteria that would please H.E,” the officer said, claiming that Grace Mugabe wanted her daughter to get married so much she ignored important information.
-The wedding was criticized by many for alleged opulence among the relative poverty in the country. “What pains us is that the wedding is being done at a cost of $5million when the country is failing to pay for school fees for all graduates under the Presidential scholarship and failing to do the same for disadvantaged kids in the country,” the officer said.
