Sally Hayfron - Exile and Family

Exile and Family

Hayfron married Robert Mugabe in April 1961 in Salisbury. In 1967, Sally went into exile in London, and resided in Ealing Broadway, West London; her stay in Britain was financed, at least in part, by the British Ariel Foundation. She spent the next eight years agitating and campaigning for the release of political detainees in Rhodesia, including her husband who had been arrested in 1964 and was to remain incarcerated for ten years. Their only son, Nhamodzenyika, who was born in 1963 during this period of detention and imprisonment, would succumb to a severe attack of malaria and die in Ghana in 1966. Her father also died in 1970. The British Home Office attempted to deport her, but after her husband petitioned the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, she was given British residency. Her case for residency was supported by two British Government ministers in particular: Maurice Foley, M.P., from the Labour Party, and Lord Lothian, from the Tory Party. Mugabe was prevented from attending the burial of his son.

With the release of Mugabe from prison in 1975 and his subsequent escape to Mozambique with Edgar Tekere his fellow revolutionary and then best friend to kick start the war. Sally Mugabe was able to re-join her husband in Maputo. Here, she found herself challenged to a new role of a mother figure to thousands of Zimbabwean refugees and revolutionaries who had fled from Rhodesian governmental oppression. Her efforts in this role earned her the popular title Amai (Mother).