A South African court on Thursday fined Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe and ordered him deported to Zimbabwe after he pleaded guilty to immigration and firearms-related offences. The 28-year-old is Robert Mugabe’s youngest son.
Magistrate Renier Boshoff ordered police to take Mugabe to Johannesburg’s international airport after imposing a 400,000 rand fine, or about £17,851, for pointing a toy gun in a way that was likely to be seen as a real firearm in a separate 2023 incident. He was also fined 200,000 rand, about £8,919.50, for breaking immigration law.
The ruling came on 24 April and ended a case that had already put the Mugabe name back in the South African spotlight. Mugabe and his cousin, Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, were initially charged with attempted murder after an employee was shot in the back on 19 February at the Mugabe family home in a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg.
That shooting did not lead directly to Thursday’s deportation order. The fines were for separate offences, while the February case remained part of the wider pressure around the family’s conduct in south Africa. Earlier this month, Matonhodze pleaded guilty to attempted murder, firearms offences, defeating the ends of justice and contravening immigration law.
Boshoff said the sentences were reduced because both men had pleaded guilty, had already spent three years in prison since the shooting, and because the victim wanted to withdraw the charges after being paid. The investigating officer said Sipho Mahlangu, 23, had received 250,000 rand, with another 150,000 rand promised. Boshoff also said he did not know whether the second accused had taken the blame for Mugabe and that he could only act on the record before him.
The case is another reminder of how often the Mugabe family has surfaced in South African courts since Robert Mugabe was deposed in a 2017 coup and died two years later aged 95. Grace Mugabe avoided a court case in South Africa in 2017 by invoking diplomatic immunity, and Robert Junior Mugabe, 34, has also been in the news after his arrest and bail in June last year over an alleged assault at a goldmine.
For South African authorities, Thursday’s order was a tidy legal outcome in one case and an awkward echo of another. Mugabe’s departure now hands the family one immediate consequence, but the February shooting, the paid withdrawal of charges and the court’s doubts over who did what still leave the wider story hanging over Johannesburg.