Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe walked free from a Harare court on Friday after prosecutors withdrew a drug-possession charge against him, while his friend Max Mugaba remained in custody over the same 72 grammes of cannabis.
The 29-year-old son of Zimbabwe’s late former president Robert Mugabe had been arrested with Mugaba after police stopped their vehicle. His lawyer, Simbarashe Mukwekwezeka, said the pair were on their way to get a haircut when officers pulled them over because the vehicle was unregistered.
Mukwekwezeka said Chatunga had not known that Mugaba was carrying cannabis in a bag. “The vehicle was searched and that is when the drugs were discovered,” the lawyer said.
The State withdrew the charge against Chatunga before he was asked to enter a plea. Mugaba, a music promoter, remained in custody pending a decision on his bail application. He accepted responsibility for possessing the cannabis, according to information given in court.
The latest case put Chatunga back in court in Zimbabwe less than six months after he was deported from South Africa, where he had been held following a shooting at a Johannesburg home. It also came a year after a separate assault case involving security workers at a mine in Mazowe.
From the Johannesburg shooting to deportation
Chatunga and his cousin Tobias Matonhodze were arrested in February after a worker was shot at a property in Hyde Park, an affluent Johannesburg suburb where Chatunga had been staying. The worker, described in court proceedings as a security guard, was shot twice in the back and taken to hospital in a critical condition.
South African prosecutors initially charged both men with attempted murder. The case changed after Matonhodze admitted that he had shot the worker. The attempted-murder charge against Chatunga was then dropped.
Chatunga pleaded guilty to two other offences: pointing a firearm and being in South Africa unlawfully. The firearm charge related to a separate incident, and the court heard that the object was a toy gun which could be mistaken for a real weapon.
A Johannesburg court ordered Chatunga to pay a total fine of 600,000 rand for the firearm and immigration offences. He paid the fine and was deported to Zimbabwe at the end of April. Matonhodze pleaded guilty to attempted murder and other offences, including defeating the ends of justice, and was sentenced to three years in prison before deportation.
The February shooting case had kept Chatunga in custody for weeks as proceedings were delayed. It ended with a starkly different outcome for the two relatives: Matonhodze admitted shooting the worker and received a prison sentence, while Chatunga left South Africa after paying fines for the separate firearm and immigration offences.
Earlier cases in Zimbabwe
The Johannesburg case was not Chatunga’s first recent appearance in court. In 2025, he and two bodyguards faced five counts of assault following an incident at Ultimate Mine in Mazowe. Five security workers were named as complainants.
The State alleged that the group accused the guards of helping illegal miners and assaulted several of them. One guard was said to have been beaten with fists and feet and struck with objects, while another was allegedly handcuffed. Chatunga and the two co-accused were released on bail of 200 US dollars each. The case was still pending in reporting on his later South African proceedings.
A year earlier, Chatunga was arrested in the border town of Beitbridge over an allegation that he had assaulted a police officer. He was granted bail, but a warrant was later issued after he failed to attend court. The case added another entry to a series of legal encounters in Zimbabwe, though the later status of that matter was not established in the available court reporting.
His brother’s cannabis conviction
Chatunga’s latest case has also drawn attention to his older brother, Robert Mugabe Jr, who was arrested in Harare in October 2025 after police stopped his car for travelling the wrong way down a one-way street.
Police said officers searched the black sling bag he was wearing and found two sachets of cannabis. The police charge sheet put the total at two grammes, valued at 30 US dollars. Mugabe Jr’s lawyer disputed aspects of the police account at the time, including the amount and where the cannabis had been found.
Mugabe Jr later pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis. A Harare magistrate fined him 300 US dollars, with four months in prison as the alternative if he failed to pay. He had previously missed a court appearance, prompting a warrant that was cancelled after he returned to court.
The 2025 arrest was not his first encounter with police. In 2023, he was arrested over allegations that he damaged vehicles and assaulted a police officer at a party in Harare. He was later freed after reaching an out-of-court settlement with the complainant, who was a friend.
The two brothers’ records are not identical. Chatunga’s latest drug charge was withdrawn, while Mugabe Jr admitted possession and was convicted. Chatunga’s South African attempted-murder charge was dropped after his co-accused admitted responsibility for the shooting, but he was convicted on separate firearm and immigration offences. Each case has had its own sequence of allegations, pleas and outcomes.
For now, Chatunga has returned to Zimbabwe and walked away from the latest drug charge. Mugaba remains the one in custody over the cannabis found during the vehicle search, while the Mugabe brothers’ earlier cases continue to form the backdrop to every new court appearance.