State granted leave to appeal bail of 12 soldiers accused of kidnapping, murder

JOHANNESBURG - The Johannesburg High Court has granted the State leave to appeal a bail decision for 12 defence force members accused of kidnapping and murder.

The dozen highly-skilled South African National Defence Force (SANDF) members were granted bail in July by the Randburg Magistrates Court following their arrest for an alleged coverup in the murder of Hawks investigator Frans Mathipa.

Mathipa was assassinated in August 2023 while investigating the alleged abduction of two foreign nationals from the Mall of Africa a few months earlier.

A preliminary probe had led Mathipa to the doorstep of some army officials who are now accused of his murder.

In 2023, Mathipa was roped in to probe the disappearance of an alleged ISIS associate Abdella Abadiga and his bodyguard.

The State doesn’t believe it was a coincidence that the members of SANDF Special Task Force were at the same place, at the same time as the pair when they disappeared.

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It said the special forces unit deliberately evaded Mathipa’s attempts to get more information about their possible link to the kidnappings and put pressure on investigators to drop the probe to salvage the relationship between law enforcers, before allegedly putting a hit on the Hawks investigator.

The application for leave to appeal brought before the Johannesburg High Court sought relief against the decision of the magistrate who granted the soldiers bail.

The State said the lower court’s findings that the State’s case was weak was incorrect.

In addition, the State said the magistrate failed to have proper regard for the strong circumstantial evidence that it had presented.

“The submissions by the accused in their responding documents cited that an appeal by the State against the granting of bail lies only against points of law which were disputed by the High Court, as it remarked that bail appeals have no such qualification. It stated that the question in bail appeals relates to the wrongness of the magistrate’s decision, which may either be on a point of law or on the factual findings.

“The court further expanded that the question before it was whether there existed reasonable prospects that a court of appeal may find that the magistrate who granted the accused bail, exercised her discretion wrongly. The judge concluded that there is a reasonable prospect that an appeal court may find the magistrate misdirected himself or herself.”

The case has been postponed to 17 September 2025 for further investigations, while the date for the appeal hearing is yet to be announced.