Robert Mugabe

Robert Gabriel Mugabe (born February 21, 1924) has been the head of government in Zimbabwe, first as Prime Minister and later as first executive President, since 1980.

Mugabe's marriages

His well-respected Ghanaian first wife, Sally (née Hayfron, born 1933), died in 1992, from a chronic kidney ailment (their only son died at age 4, while Mugabe was in prison). About two years before, Mugabe had married his former secretary, Grace Marufu, 40 years his junior and with whom he already had two children, in a tribal ceremony. Mugabe justified the marriage under a traditional African law which allows him to take a junior wife.

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1933 - 1992

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On August 17, 1996, Mugabe and Marufu were married in a Catholic wedding Mass at a Catholic Mission School he previously attended, Kutama College. A wedding that Nelson Mandela attended. A spokesman for Catholic Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa, who presided over the ceremony, said the diocese saw "no impediment" to the nuptials.

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August 17 - Catholic

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