South Africa deports Mugabe’s son after separate offences, three months after shooting at family home

Three months after an employee was shot in the back at the Mugabe family home in a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg, Robert Mugabe’s youngest son has been fined and ordered to leave South Africa after pleading guilty to two unrelated charges.

Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, 28, and his cousin Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, 33, were initially both charged with attempted murder after the incident on 19 February.

Earlier this month, Matonhodze pleaded guilty to attempted murder, firearms offences, defeating the ends of justice – as the gun was never found – and contravening immigration law. He was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison.

Mugabe was ordered to pay a fine of 400,000 rand (£17,851) for pointing a toy gun in a way that was likely to be seen as real firearm, over a separate 2023 incident. He was also fined 200,000 rand (£8,919.50) for breaking immigration law. He had pleaded guilty to both offences. The judge ordered police to take him to Johannesburg’s international airport to be deported to Zimbabwe.

Magistrate Renier Boshoff told Mugabe: “I do not know whether the second accused took the rap for you, and I can only act on what is before me.”

The magistrate said the sentences were mitigated by the two men pleading guilty to the offences they were convicted of, the time they had spent in prison since the shooting on 19 February, and because the victim, 23-year-old Sipho Mahlungu, wanted to withdraw the charges after being paid by Mugabe and Matonhodze. Prosecutors had asked for lengthy jail sentences for both men.

Investigating officer Raj Ramchunder told the 24 April sentencing hearing that Mahlungu was paid 250,000 rand (£11,150), with a further 150,000 (£6,690) promised.

Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe for almost 40 years, initially as a hero, having ended white minority rule in Zimbabwe. His rule turned authoritarian, and he presided over hyperinflation and economic collapse. He was deposed in a coup in 2017 and died two years later aged 95.

Mugabe and his older brother, Robert Junior, 34, became notorious in the 2010s for sharing their lavish lifestyles online.

In 2017, their mother, Grace Mugabe, avoided a court case in South Africa by invoking diplomatic immunity. The model Gabriella Engels accused the former first lady of until she bled.