Inside the Mugabe dynasty
4/25/202626 min
Late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe died in 2019, but in the years before and since his death, his three children with his former wife, Grace, consistenly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April 2026 Bellarmine Mugabe pled guilty to a firearms offence in South Africa and last year, his brother, Robert Jnr, was convicted on drugs charges. The BBC's Khanyisile Ngcobo has been tracking the public's perception of the Mugabe family in Zimbabwe.
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Presented by Faranak Amidi.
Produced by Laura Thomas, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean.
(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsFaranak Amidi· Host0:00
Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
Lestia Kertopati0:03
[on-hold music] [speaking foreign language] The Fifth Floor.
Hana Zeratsyon0:13
[speaking foreign language] The Fifth Floor.
Faranak Amidi· Host0:17
This is The Fifth Floor at the heart of global storytelling with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Farnak Amidi. In 2017, shortly before Robert Mugabe resigned the presidency of Zimbabwe following a military takeover, Bellarmine Mugabe, the youngest of his sons, posted a picture of himself wearing a flashy watch on social media captioned with the words, "Sixty thousand dollars on the wrist when your daddy run the whole country, you know." He would later go on to post another video, this time showing him pouring champagne over yet another expensive watch. At the time of Mugabe senior's resignation, the average wage for a low-skilled worker in Zimbabwe was just over two hundred thirty dollars a month. Robert Mugabe himself died in twenty nineteen, but in the years since, his children with his former wife, Grace, have continued to make headlines. Earlier this month, Bellarmine