MUGABE’S REFUSAL TO MARRY GRAÇA MACHEL LED TO HER CRITICISM OF ZIM LEADER, DECLASSIFIED US INTEL MEMO CLAIMS
JOHANNESBURG – A declassified March 2009 memo from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) alleges that former Mozambican First Lady Graça Machel’s later public criticism of then Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe stemmed from a personal grudge after he refused a proposal that he marry her.
The document, released via FOIA as part of a larger cache of declassified US intelligence files on Nelson Mandela obtained by Washington-based transparency group Property of the People after years of litigation and published as “The Mandela Files,” was first reported in 2018 by outlets including ZimLive and Daily Maverick.
According to the memo, which carries a subject line along the lines of “Graça Machel and Robert Mugabe – A woman scorned gets her revenge?”, regional leaders had at one point proposed that Mugabe marry Graça Machel, the widow of Mozambican President Samora Machel, as a matter of regional obligation given her status as “the most important widow in the region.”
The memo claims that Mugabe “adamantly refused and made disparaging remarks about her that made it to Graca,” after which she “had it in for Mugabe.” It further alleges that this personal grievance, more than policy disagreements, motivated her later criticism of Mugabe, including through her work with The Elders group of global leaders.
The document states that after Mugabe declined, the regional leaders approached Nelson Mandela, who “begrudgingly accepted” to marry Machel out of a sense of obligation, despite not being keen on the idea. Machel and Mandela were married in 1998.
The DIA report is explicitly marked as an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence, and is based on unspecified sourcing. It has not been corroborated, and no official confirmation of the underlying allegation’s accuracy has been publicly issued by the DIA. Intelligence officials routinely circulate unverified reports, gossip and rumor from regional political circles, which are later archived.
The 2018 release of thousands of pages of US intelligence documents on Mandela revealed that Washington had continued to monitor the anti-apartheid icon as a potential communist threat even after his release from prison in 1990 and after the end of the Cold War. The collection included documents from the FBI, CIA, NSA and DIA.