Inside the Mugabe dynasty

April 25, 2026 · 26 min

About this episode

This episode explores the Mugabe family's controversial legacy, the viral social media presence of Emak Farida, and the experiences of female veterans from the Tigray conflict.

Late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe died in 2019, but in the years before and since his death, his three children with his former wife, Grace, consistenly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April 2026 Bellarmine Mugabe pled guilty to a firearms offence in South Africa and last year, his brother, Robert Jnr, was convicted on drugs charges. The BBC's Khanyisile Ngcobo has been tracking the public's perception of the Mugabe family in Zimbabwe. In Indonesia, the posts of a woman called Emak Farida, 'Mother Farida', have gone viral on social media. From a remote village in East Kalimantan province, Farida's soothing posts documenting her daily life have found a devoted following amongst a generation of young people who've moved to big cities for work but still yearn for the village life and the family they've left behind. BBC Indonesian's Lesthia Kertopati reports. When war broke out in 2020 between Ethiopia's federal government and the the Tigray region of the country, many women in Tigray joined the armed forces, in part to avoid sexual violence, as reports of women being assaulted by soldiers started to appear. As the regional factions draw closer to war once again…

People in this episode

Hosts: Khanyisile Ngcobo, Lesthia Kertopati, Hana Zeratsyon

Topics covered

Mugabe family
public perception
social media influence
women in conflict
veterans' experiences
family and community

Keywords

Mugabe dynasty
Zimbabwe
social media
Emak Farida
Tigray war
female veterans
public perception
firearms offence
drugs charges

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Indonesia, Ethiopia, East Kalimantan province