Almost two months after his arrest over a shooting that left a 23-year-old security guard critically injured in South Africa’s Johannesburg, Bellarmine Mugabe, the youngest son of Zimbabwe’s late long-ruling former president Robert Mugabe, has entered guilty pleas to two of the charges against him: pointing a firearm and unlawful presence in South Africa. The 28-year-old entered the pleas following a pre-trial deal with prosecutors, leaving the original attempted murder charge against him unresolved as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) of South Africa has not issued any public comment on the status of that count. Mugabe appeared alongside his 33-year-old co-accused Tobias Matonhodze at the Alexandra Regional Court on Friday, with both men having remained in custody since their arrest on 19 February. Matonhodze has pleaded guilty to four separate charges: attempted murder, defeating the ends of justice, unlawful immigration and illegal possession of ammunition. According to prosecution accounts, the shooting broke out following a heated altercation between the two accused and the victim at Mugabe’s residential property in Hyde Park, one of Johannesburg’s most affluent suburban neighborhoods. As the victim attempted to flee the scene, he was shot twice in the back, and was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition. Law enforcement officers launched a full search of the property following the incident, but have not yet recovered the weapon used in the attack. Lawyers representing both defendants informed the court that their clients are willing to voluntarily return to Zimbabwe at their own cost if the court chooses not to hand down custodial sentences. Sentencing hearings have been scheduled for 24 April, the NPA confirmed. This high-profile case has already been marked by multiple procedural delays, with two postponements of Mugabe’s initial bail application since his arrest. This is not the first time Bellarmine Mugabe, one of two children Robert Mugabe shared with his second wife Grace, has run afoul of the law. In 2024, he was arrested on allegations of assaulting a police officer at the Zimbabwean border town of Beitbridge. Though he was granted bail after that arrest, a warrant was subsequently issued for his detention when he failed to appear for scheduled court proceedings, according to Zimbabwe’s state-owned *Herald* newspaper. Just one year later, in June 2025, he was taken into custody again for an alleged assault on a security guard at a mining site in Mazowe, located roughly an hour’s drive north of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare. That case remains pending before Zimbabwean courts. Robert Mugabe, the former Zimbabwean leader, held presidential power for 37 years before he was removed from office in a 2017 military-led coup, and he died in 2019 at the age of 95.