Robert Mugabe died in September, which shouldn’t have been surprising. He was as old as dirt.

Somehow, it was still a shocker, though. I was starting to think he was immortal.

It’s possible he felt the same way, because according to reports he didn’t leave a will.

Instead, his living relatives, including his daughter Bona Chikowore,  have had to appeal to the Master of the High Court to register his estate.

All of this is coming to us from the Herald, a state-owned newspaper in Zimbabwe. Any information from anything ‘state-owned’ in Zimbabwe should be taken with a pinch of salt, so we’re sure this isn’t the entire story.

Here’s TimesLIVE with what we do know:

Zimbabweans have speculated for years about the extent of Mugabe’s wealth, with many assuming that he and his family amassed a vast fortune during his 37 years in power.

…A diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Harare in 2001 that was published by Wikileaks said Mugabe was rumoured to have more than $1 billion of assets in Zimbabwe and overseas but that it had no reliable information.

Social media posts showing his sons Robert Jr and Bellarmine Chatunga with bottles of expensive champagne at a Johannesburg nightclub and reports of Grace’s shopping sprees have offered tantalising glimpses of the family’s lavish spending.

When Grace wasn’t shopping, she was beating up models in Jozi.

Instead of the estimated billions, Bona Chikowore tried to register the following as part of Mugabe’s estate:

[Assets included] $10 million held in a local bank, four houses in Harare, 10 cars, one farm, his rural home and an orchard.

One of the properties is the palatial home known as Blue Roof in an upmarket suburb of the capital where Mugabe lived.

The list doesn’t include the dairy business that he ran with Grace, or the several farms that he reportedly owned outside of Zimbabwe.

The Herald said Mugabe’s lawyer Terrence Hussein had also asked the court to register the estate, saying he and the family had not found any will left by Zimbabwe’s founding leader.

Under Zimbabwean laws, the estate of a person who dies without a will is distributed between their spouse and children.

It also doesn’t include the billions he surely syphoned off whilst he ran Zimbabwe into the ground.

Hussein is looking into the possibility that another law firm could have handled the drafting of the will, but has thus far been unsuccessful.

When he was on his last legs, Mugabe complained about his retirement package, saying that he didn’t have enough money for the upkeep of the Blue Roof.

Yeah, it sucks when you’re no longer able to loot your country while your people starve.

#DictatorProblems

[source:timeslive]