Mnangagwa sets up Auxillia with Lukashenko meeting
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has positioned his wife Auxillia, the First Lady, and his sons at the centre of Zimbabwe’s state-driven money-spinning business arrangements with Belarus.
Auxillia has been in Minsk for a week to consolidate and cut lucrative deals in various fields.
Mnangagwa has entrenched Auxillia in state affairs unconstitutionally as she is now increasingly deployed to represent government at home and abroad when she is not an elected office-bearer.
Mnangagwa used that pretext to oust the late former president Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup.
Recently, Mnangagwa’s key ally Frederick Shava, Harare’s Foreign minister, was in Minsk where he met President Alexander Lukashenko on 28 March to implement Zimbabwe’s deals with Belarus in various fields, including manufacturing, mining, transport, agriculture and health.
Prior to that, Lukashenko was in Zimbabwe at the end of January into early February on a three-day state visit.
He signed a series of bilateral and business deals with Mnangagwa in various areas of interest, including in mining.
Mnangagwa had visited Lukashenko in January 2019.
“Yes, I came here as the First Lady of my country. But I also came here as a mother who knows a lot about family values and how women in my country take care of their families,” Auxillia Mnangagwa said in Minsk.
