JOHANNESBURG - For a family that once ran a country, the Mugabes have produced a steady supply of headlines since leaving power. On Monday the youngest son supplied the latest.
Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, 28, appeared briefly in a Johannesburg court charged with attempted murder after a 23-year-old man was allegedly shot in the back on 19 February at a house in Hyde Park, The Guardian reported. He appeared alongside a co-accused, Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, 33.
Both men also face charges of obstructing justice, illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, theft, and contraventions of the Immigration Act on suspicion of being in South Africa illegally, according to Magaboke Mohlatlole, a spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority. The charges are allegations, and both men are presumed innocent.
Their lawyer, Sinenhlanhla Mnguni, said he would apply for bail at the next hearing, on 3 March. He declined to say whether the two men were related.
What the State alleges
The case began last Thursday. Police were called to a property in Hyde Park, a plush suburb where, The Guardian noted, President Cyril Ramaphosa also has a home. A 23-year-old man, believed to be a gardener who worked at the house, had been shot once. He was taken to hospital in a critical condition, the BBC reported.
Officers searching the house found bullet cartridges but no firearm. Police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said the suspects had not “told us where the gun is, they are not saying anything about the gun.” At Monday’s hearing a state prosecutor said the weapon had still not been found and that investigations were “far from over”.
The theft charge relates to what happened next, according to the prosecution. “After [the alleged victim] got shot, he tried to flee. He went outside of the gate and then he fell. After falling, one of the accused went and took the remote [for the gate] from him,” Mohlatlole said.
The injured man remains in hospital under police watch, Nevhuhulwi told the SABC.
The family name
Bellarmine is the youngest son of Robert Mugabe and his second wife, Grace. Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe for 37 years before being forced from power in 2017, and died in 2019.
The younger Mugabe sons became known in the 2010s for sharing their lavish lifestyles online. In 2017, The Guardian recalled, Bellarmine posted a photograph of his watch on Instagram with the caption: “$60,000 on the wrist when your daddy run the whole country ya know!!!”
His daddy no longer runs anything. The South African criminal justice system, as Monday showed, runs on its own timetable.
The cartoons
The cartoons that followed the arrest were less restrained than the court. One shows a South African officer marching a handcuffed young man past a sign for “37 Hyde Park”, lecturing him that his father “was busy oppressing the people of Zimbabwe for 37 years”. The cannabis plants in the background are the cartoonist’s flourish: none of the charges concerns drugs.
The second cartoon is sharper about Zimbabwe than about the accused. A family sets off on foot towards Musina, bags on their heads, reasoning that if the former president’s son lives in South Africa, there is no reason for them to stay at home. It is a joke about the immigration charge, but it is also a joke about the many ordinary Zimbabweans who have made the same journey with fewer advantages.
What comes next
The case returns to court on 3 March, when the defence is expected to apply for bail. Until then, the gun remains missing, the victim remains in hospital, and the former first son waits to learn whether a South African court will let him out on bail.
