A South African magistrate has fined and ordered the deportation of Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, the youngest son of the late Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, over two unrelated offences dating from 2023. The decision comes two months after a shooting at the Mugabe family home in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb that left an employee wounded.
On 19 February, Bellarmine, 28, and his cousin Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, 33, were initially charged with attempted murder after an employee was shot in the back. Matonhodze pleaded guilty earlier to attempted murder, firearms offences, defeating the ends of justice (the gun was not recovered) and contravening immigration law; he was sentenced to three years in prison.
Bellarmine pleaded guilty to separate 2023 offences: pointing a toy gun in a way likely to be perceived as a real firearm, and breaching immigration regulations. Magistrate Renier Boshoff fined him 400,000 rand (about £17,850) for the toy-gun offence and 200,000 rand (about £8,920) for the immigration breach, and directed police to take him to Johannesburg’s international airport for deportation to Zimbabwe.
The magistrate said he could act only on the evidence before him, adding, “I do not know whether the second accused took the rap for you, and I can only act on what is before me.” He said he had taken into account guilty pleas, time spent in custody since the February incident, the victim’s decision to withdraw charges after being paid, and that both men were first-time offenders in South Africa. Prosecutors had sought longer jail terms.
Investigating officer Raj Ramchunder told the court the victim, 23-year-old Sipho Mahlangu, had already received 250,000 rand (about £11,150) and had been promised a further 150,000 rand (about £6,690).
Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe for almost four decades and was a polarising figure—initially hailed for ending white minority rule and later criticised for authoritarian rule and economic collapse. He was ousted in a 2017 coup and died in 2019. Members of his family have attracted attention in recent years: Bellarmine and his older brother Robert Junior were noted for flaunting lavish lifestyles online, and their mother, Grace Mugabe, invoked diplomatic immunity to avoid a South African assault case in 2017.
Bellarmine has also faced legal trouble in Zimbabwe; local media reported arrests in 2023 and 2024 related to alleged assaults, but the current status of those matters is unclear.