Meeting Robert Mugabe in Harare’s State House

Rohit Kachroo with Robert Mugabe Credit: ITV News

Entering Harare’s State House, Mugabe’s home-cum-office, felt like walking onto the set of a television programme. But which show? This was one-part ‘Downton Abbey’, one-part ‘The Only Way Is Essex’.

His home looked like a Hollywood re-imagination of how a British colonialist might live, and a multi-million dollar expression of disconnection. Because while many Zimbabweans were being brutalised and impoverished not far from its front gates, he was able to live in the luxury of his swish-but-kitsch palace.

I was here to speak to Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president who led former Rhodesia to independence from Britain in 1980. On the eve of national elections, he had agreed to his first interview with a British journalist for more than a decade. The polls were yet to open but everyone in Team Mugabe seemed relaxed. Was it possible that they knew what the result would be?

We were led past the flashy presidential limousine with ‘ZIM 1’ number plates, beyond the ornamental animals, stuffed leopards and lions perched on the veranda and through set after set of shiny white pillars

Of all Mugabe’s many contradictions, his taste in interior design was perhaps the least offensive. But it says a little about who he is: a colonialist with caveats, underneath the freedom fighter facade of an apparent man of the people.

I was summoned into the lobby. Inside, surrounded by a dozen or so security officials, was Mugabe. Frail, short, but certainly in charge. At times he would struggle to lift his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. But certain topics of conversation would trigger a blast of energy.

I suspected that he had granted me this interview for two reasons: because I am not white, and because I do not work for the BBC, which he struggled to disassociate with old colonial power. And yet he was a closet Anglophile.

“I like the royal family” he said. “The Queen (pause)… Prince Charles (pause)… Lady Diana (pause)…” he told me - unprompted - his energy waning as he drifted down the hereditary line.

Not only was he obsessed with Britain, he was defined by it. But like a spurned lover moaning in a pub, he could not forget the sense of rejection when it imposed sanctions and annulled his honorary knighthood.

He spoke of his “condemnation by us of Britain and mainly of the government of Mr Blair - he’s the one who caused it, he didn’t want dialogue - and then we wondered what sort of government it was that would prefer to impose sanctions on us.”

But there was another side to Mugabe. He cracked jokes, though they were always at someone’s expense. And his huddle of officials was always on hand to laugh when required.

Finally, he proudly showed me his grand piano and asked if I played. “We have the piano for the kids” he said. He told me how he liked to sit next to it to hear them perform: a world away from the farm-burnings and opposition-beatings that his regime is known for.

Mugabe no longer had Britain’s affection, but he found joy in his possessions. At least he had his home, his piano, his servants, his ornamental animals, his limousines. He might be about to lose those too.

A copy of this article first ran in The Evening Standard.