Grace Mugabe says she “saw the hand of God” last week after her leg was run over by her husband’s armour-plated limousine.

In her first public comments on the “freak accident”, the 52-year-old First Lady said it was “a miracle” she could still walk.

“I am telling you I was run over by the armoured car… My leg was crushed and I thought I was not going to walk the rest of my life,” she said, in comments carried by the state-run Chronicle.

“I used to hear people saying they survived after being run over by cars and mine is also a miracle that I am walking today… I really saw the hand of God that day.”

The accident occurred on July 15, shortly after the Mugabes returned from the president”s latest medical check-up in Singapore. The limousine sent to pick them up from the airport moved off before she’d got in.

Grace Mugabe was speaking on Sunday at her 52nd birthday party.

She also touched on drug abuse and “anti-social behaviour” by children, with the Chronicle reporting her saying that “young people were bound to be naughty at some point whether they were the president’s children or not”.

It wasn’t clear if that was a reference to her own two sons, Robert Junior and Bellarmine Chatunga, who were reportedly evicted from a luxury Sandton apartment in June for “unacceptable behaviour”.

The two of them were both at Sunday’s party. A picture in the state-run Herald showed them by her side as she cut her birthday cake. Robert Junior is reportedly studying at the University of Johannesburg.