Johannesburg – Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, the son of Zimbabwe’s late president Robert pleaded guilty in a Johannesburg court to pointing a firearm and contravening South Africa immigration laws proposing a 12 month prison sentence in a guilty plea.
His co-accused cousin Tobias Matonhodze also pleased guilty to attempted murder, illegal firearm possession and defeating ends of justice.
Mugabe and his defence team in their guilty plea proposed to be sentenced to 12 months in jail for each of the charges he is facing.
Matonhodze is proposing a five years in jail sentence for attempted murder, 12 years for illegal firearm possession and 12 years for defeating ends of justice.
The case has been postponed to 29 April for sentencing.
South Africa prosecutors are still negotiating with the defence but they want stiff sentences since the firearm related to the charges was not recovered.
The defence says the gun was removed by somebody else.
The investigating officer told the court that the victim of the shooting Sipho Mahlangu was paid R250 000 and another R150 000 is yet to be paid. In total the defence want to pay the Mahlangu R400 000.
When South African police arrived at the crime scene, they could not find the gun, and it has not yet been recovered.
The shooting, which happened at the Mugabe residence in Johannesburg’s upmarket, leafy suburb of Hyde Park, is the latest in a litany of cases involving Mugabe’s sons.
The Johannesburg house was bought for the Mugabe boys when their father was still in power in 2017 for R43 million, which was the equivalent of about US$3.2 million at the time.
Chatunga Bellarmine is Robert Mugabe’s third and last born child with his second wife, Grace Mugabe.
Grace Mugabe cannot come to South Africa to support her son because of a warrant of arrest issued in 2017 after she allegedly assaulted South African model Gabriella Engels at a Johannesburg hotel.