Former late Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe. (Wikimedia Commons)
Irresponsible sex, betrayal, drugs, alcohol, failed marriage, short temper, violence, arrogance and a “do you know who I am” attitude summarise the lives of late Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe’s children.
The fall of Mugabe in November 2017 and his eventual death in September two years later had a direct and negative impact on his then relatively young children. Six years after his death, the reality of navigating life without Mugabe’s philosophical approach or first family privileges that could literally let his kids get away with murder is still hitting hard.
Bona Mugabe, aged 37, Robert Jr, 33, Chatunga, 29, and their older stepbrother Russell Goreraza, 41, are now just rich kids from next door with everyday struggles.
Robert Jr has earned a reputation for being unpredictable and uncontrollable. Last week, he was arrested for drug possession while speeding through traffic at high speed in the busiest section of Harare’s central business district.
He is out on $300 bail and due back in court on 22 October to answer to charges of the unlawful possession of two grams of marijuana. The state will seek to link Mugabe to a network of alleged drug dealers in Harare; he’s accused of peddling.
In February 2023, Mugabe Jr appeared in court facing charges of malicious property damage. The state said one morning, Mugabe Jr accused his friend’s gardener of urinating on the wheels of his car, leading to a heated argument.
The gardener fled from the scene, following which Mugabe Jr smashed the windshields of two Mercedes-Benz cars parked in the yard of his friend Sindiso Nkathazo. He also went inside the house to destroy electric gadgets such as televisions. The damage was estimated at $12 000.
Although being around the children of Zimbabwe’s ruling aristocracy is valued social capital in some circles, some of Robert Jr’s friends have told of abuse at his hands.
In December last year, one former friend posted on social media how the younger Mugabe had beaten up a friend with a beer bottle, landing him in hospital.
The friend shared a video of the beating and another one where Robert Jr was seen tampering with the victim’s intravenous drip during a visit to the hospital.
The friend wasn’t done. He also leaked a sex tape of Robert Jr and posted afterwards that, “I went to jail because of you!!! And now you’re attacking my family; come on, how ruthless!”
In May 2022, Robert Jr was admitted to a hospital in Singapore after his right lung collapsed during a visit there. In September 2023, he narrowly escaped death when his Range Rover Vogue crashed in Inyanga, a resort town in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands.
Unlike his father, he’s not a political animal. He only featured once to endorse President Emmerson Mnangagwa at a rally of the ruling Zanu-PF party ahead of the 2023 general elections. His words were simple: “I am a Zanu-PF child.”
His young brother Chatunga, the spitting image of their father, is another short-tempered Mugabe.
“That one is like his father. He stands by what he believes in. We have failed to have him attend our functions and rallies. He’s his father’s child in every sense,” a Zanu-PF politburo member told the Mail and Guardian.
Chatunga was unhappy about how his father lost power to Mnangagwa and as a result openly endorsed opposition leader Nelson Chamisa ahead of the last elections.
Chatunga has also had his own share of run-ins with the law.
In September, while being chauffeured from the town of Beitbridge to the capital, Harare, by a Chinese national, he lost his composure at a police roadblock when asked for documents for the car they were travelling in.
According to court papers, Chatunga allegedly brandished a pocket knife at the policeman and barked, “Do you know who I am?” He’s out on free bail, and the matter is pending.
Before that, Chatunga, along with his two bodyguards, Peter Fredson and Tinashe Mupawo, faced five counts of assault in a dispute with miners who invaded his mother, Grace Mugabe’s Ion Mask farm in Mazowe.
The court heard how Chatunga and his guards tortured their victims using wooden logs and an iron bar. They are out on $200 bail each.
In 2014, Mugabe’s daughter Bona married Simba Chikore, who had previously flown her father on Air Zimbabwe. They have three children, but the marriage broke down in 2023, with Bona citing “irreconcilable differences” in divorce papers.
Chikore refused to walk away from the marriage empty-handed and is demanding a share of Bona’s wealth, which includes a real estate portfolio that covers farms worth at least $80 million, a $800 000 Rolls-Royce and numerous other luxury cars, and as a mansion in Dubai.
In his papers, Chikore said he wanted part of the wealth “acquired solely and jointly during their marriage through inheritance and donations”.
Bona hit back, saying “there was never a marriage” in the first place, arguing that when she married Chikore, he was already legally married to an American woman, Margaret Jeanine Brooks — something he kept secret — in violation of the Marriage Act. She argues he should not get a cent from her.
Mugabe’s widow, Grace, lives a private life away from the power and politics she once enjoyed as first lady. Snippets of her life are shown when she makes an appearance on special occasions.
In August, she turned 60, marking it with a lavish, exclusive birthday party attended by her closest friends and former political associates at the palatial Mugabe home, the Blue Roof, in one of Harare’s — and Zimbabwe’s — most affluent suburbs, Borrowdale.