Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA — Bellarmine Mugabe, the youngest son of the late Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, has been ordered to be deported from South Africa immediately following a series of criminal charges.
A court in Johannesburg issued the order on Wednesday after the 28-year-old pleaded guilty to pointing a firearm and being in the country illegally.
The legal proceedings stem from a violent incident on February 19, 2026, at Mugabe’s residence in the affluent Hyde Park suburb. Police were called to the home following the shooting of a 23-year-old employee who was hospitalized in critical condition after being shot twice in the back while attempting to flee.
Okay News reports that while a charge of attempted murder against Mugabe was dropped after his co-accused, Tobias Matonhodze, pleaded guilty to the shooting, Mugabe was still handed a significant fine of $36,000 (approx. ₦48.9 million) alongside the deportation order.
Tobias Matonhodze received a three-year prison sentence for attempted murder, illegal immigration, and possession of ammunition. Prosecutors revealed that the shooting was the result of a heated row within the property, though the weapon used in the crime has not yet been recovered by authorities. The charge of pointing a firearm against Mugabe involved a separate, earlier incident that the court agreed to hear concurrently with the immigration and shooting case.
This is far from Mugabe’s first run-in with the law across Southern Africa. In 2024, he was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer in the Zimbabwean border town of Beitbridge, later becoming a fugitive after failing to appear in court. Just last year, he faced further charges for assaulting a security guard at a mining site in Mazowe.
