Not so many weeks ago we read the report on the internet that Grace Mugabe - Amazing (Dis)Grace, as I like to call her - beat up a British photographer in a public street in Hong Kong because she didn’t like him taking her picture.

Mugabe punched the photographer, Richard Jones, repeatedly in the face, inflicting cuts with her numerous rings. Jones needed treatment at the local hospital for his injuries.

At the time, it was reported that the Hong Kong police were investigating a case of assault against Robert Mugabe’s wife, and I wrote: “I have little or no time for Mugabe’s wife, a secretary that he bedded whilst his first wife, Sally, battled for her life with a kidney complaint.

Grace Mugabe is a gutless coward who basks in her husband’s ‘reflected glory’. It is time that the law acts equally against people like this woman...”

On Sunday, we read that Mrs Mugabe has avoided prosecution as the Hong Kong police have accepted that she has diplomatic immunity! There was nothing ‘diplomatic’ about punching Richard Jones repeatedly in the face!

Grace Mugabe is not a diplomat! She is the wife of Robert Mugabe - himself a man of dubious and questionable virtue - and holds no diplomatic status as far as I am aware. So why does she qualify for immunity?

Her marriage to Mugabe is hardly an excuse - and with this decision from the Hong Kong police, it is only a matter of time before we read of more incidents that involve members of Mugabe’s ZANU PF, who will then run and hide behind diplomatic immunity…

Literally a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card - where she won’t spend one second in the dock, and no time at all in considering her fate.

It is a very dangerous precedent to set - especially when you consider that the very people such immunity would protect will be eager to show the world their capabilities against the press and other anti-Mugabe lobbyists.

I make no pretence of joining that number and I know that my writings do not endear me to the Mugabe-ites - but chances are that they have bigger fish to fry.

It concerns me deeply that Mugabe will accept no criticism, will not pay his dues, does not accept responsibility for the collapse of Zimbabwe - and now his wife has no need to answer for her criminal behaviour - and it should be mentioned that the Hong Kong police had enough evidence to proceed - just that her standing as Mugabe’s wife got in the way of justice being done.

Who can blame the reporter for questioning where justice is in this case?

I say again - it is only a matter of time before this sort of thing is happening often - a loophole in the law whereby persons of questionable personality can break the law with impunity and immunity.

Mugabe must be grinning like a Cheshire cat, knowing that his wife is free to walk the streets, break the law and not be answerable for her actions.

Who says that rank doesn’t carry with it certain privileges? Marriage alone has saved this woman from facing criminal charges – charges that you or I would certainly face had we acted the same.

And she has not even had the common decency to have offered an apology to the reporter. And the immunity from prosecution would suggest that Richard Jones needn’t stand near his telephone waiting for her call.

Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man