There is something seriously revolting about the outcome of the case involving the Mugabe spoilt brat, Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, and his cousin, Tobias Matonhodze.
Seeing Chatunga walk through airports and head home because his mother, former Zimbabwe first lady Grace Mugabe, used money to buy the silence of several people stinks to high heaven.
A man, a poor man, Sipho Mahlangu, was shot twice and nearly killed in the Mugabe residence in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, on February 19 2026. The gun used has not been found to date, despite Chatunga and Matonhodze being the only people in that house. And Matonhodze pleaded guilty to firing the missing gun.
Mahlangu, who was the gardener for the brats, was taken to hospital in serious condition. He later effectively dropped the charges by withdrawing from the case after he was paid an initial amount of R250,000 in cash, with another R150,000 to follow should he stick to the agreement.
In simple language, he was bought. And while we can wish he had refused, that is not the kind of money a gardener would ever make in one lifetime, let alone as a lump sum in one day. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Cut the poor guy some slack.
What I cannot accept is when a court of this country seems to allow the use of money to determine the outcome and sentence of a case. Chatunga faced a charge of pointing a firearm, and he pleaded guilty.
Deporting the rascal is not punishment; it is freedom — back in Mummy’s loving hands, and a ticking time bomb waiting to explode at some nightclub in Harare.
We are now told it was a toy gun, and he is sentenced to two years, with an option of a R600,000 fine. Please, man, we are talking about Grace Mugabe’s boy here; whatever fine is imposed would be paid.
If our courts understood the mood in the country amid allegations of soft-pedalling around the rich and famous, they would have sent the rascal to jail, first, to teach him a lesson in manners and, second, to hold him there until the gun is produced. It would not be too far-fetched to think it would have been an unlicensed firearm, so it had to disappear.
Cousin Matonhodze has obviously taken the fall for the prince of Kutama in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland West province. It is clear that the attempted murder charge was discounted from the sentence. Two shots were fired, not in the air like at some now infamous celebration rally in the Eastern Cape. These bullets hit a living person — twice.
And the sentence is a mere three years? Again without producing the gun? This, despite investigating officer Col Raj Ramchunder asking the court to disregard the financial arrangements with Mahlangu and calling for a harsh sentence.
Chatunga is no stranger to trouble. He has been arrested at least twice back home in nightclub brawls, in one case ending with a charge of assaulting a police officer.
Grace Mugabe herself had to summon the then ailing president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, to make an urgent state visit to Pretoria so that she could leave with him under diplomatic immunity after being charged with assault. She had found her son with a girl and assaulted not her son but the girl.
Her warrant is still active, and that is why she couldn’t rush to her boy’s aid in person. But money crosses borders easily, so what is R1m plus whatever it costs to get Matonhodze to take the full rap if it can bring Mummy’s boy home?
When courts appear to buy into money-laced shenanigans, ignore the pleas of hard-working police officers, and hand down sentences that fuel the impression that if you have money and a surname like Mugabe, you can buy your way out of prison, they do a disservice to the cause of justice.
I have said before in this column that EFF leader Sello Malema had no business firing that gun at that rally. But if doing so can be found by one magistrate to be so egregious as to warrant direct imprisonment without the option of a fine, how does Chatunga get away with a fine?
Deporting the rascal is not punishment; it is freedom — back in Mummy’s loving hands, and a ticking time bomb waiting to explode at some nightclub in Harare.
What would it take for courts in our country to impose sentences that make sense to an ordinary rural person like myself?
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