Bellarmine Mugabe’s case is NPA’s chance to fix past wrongs

Bellarmine Mugabe, 28, (L) and Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze appear at the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court in Johannesburg, on 23 February 2026, in connection with the shooting of an employee in Hyde Park. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen At the height of former president Jacob Zuma’s “nine wasted years” in power in 2017, an incident occurred in which then Zimbabwe’s first lady Grace Mugabe allegedly assaulted a South African model and girlfriend of her son with an electrical cord. AfriForum, the Afrikaner lobby group, has since gone to court and got that revoked, leading to an arrest warrant being issued for the now former first lady who lives in Singapore.

Fate has somehow intervened to provide South Africa a chance to extract some sort of justice for Gabriella Engels, the model Mugabe assaulted. One of the Mugabe boys, Bellarmine, was reportedly arrested last week following a shooting at his Hyde Park residence. The shooting of one of his employees is yet to be heard in court but the general sentiment is that the privilege extended to his mother back then cannot be extended to him and his co-accused now, because SA has worked hard to distance itself from that kind of abuse of power.

Africa as a continent has suffered a huge problem over the years with the family members of the ruling elite in most countries being shielded from taking accountability for their illegal actions in their own countries. It really is a George Orwell’s Animal Farm existence for members of Africa’s ruling elite: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” What makes it worse is that the money this ruling class has siphoned off from their countries, depriving their compatriots of better government services, has been used to buy luxurious lives throughout the world. Holding Bellarmine Mugabe accountable for any wrongdoing that can be proven to have been perpetrated by him will go a long way towards showing all families of despots their ill-gotten wealth will not grant them immunity from prosecution in a democratic South Africa.