S. Africa's Elite Unit Faces Murder Charges in Detective's Killing; Trial Stalled for 3 Ye

Lt Col Frans Mathipa had been a senior detective for years. He was shot dead on a highway in August 2023, two days after being promised the documents he had spent four months trying to obtain. Three years later, no trial date has been set.

The BBC World Service has obtained exclusive access to the prosecution case against eight members of South Africa’s security forces charged with his murder, including hundreds of pages of police and court documents. Seven are special forces soldiers. One is a military police officer. All deny the charges.

The prosecution’s case turns on a vehicle. Police documents show that a black BMW trailed Mathipa moments before he was killed. That vehicle was registered to Peters Communications Trust, a front company for South Africa’s special forces. Tracking data recovered from the car places it at the scene of the shooting. Footage from motorway toll gantries, according to police, shows one of the occupants was Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, a special forces officer who had already appeared in the investigation Mathipa was running.

That investigation concerned Abdella Abadigga, an Ethiopian man designated by the United States as an Islamic State militant, recruiter, and fundraiser. Abadigga had been granted temporary asylum in South Africa in 2008, arrested abroad in 2017, and then, according to Col Tollie Vreugdenburg, former head of counter-terrorism in The Hawks, smuggled back into South Africa by the military and Department of Home Affairs to serve as an intelligence asset. He had, in Vreugdenburg’s account, “gone rogue,” subsequently extorting Johannesburg’s Ethiopian neighbourhood with money allegedly funding IS operations.

Mathipa had been assigned to investigate allegations that special forces abducted and killed Abadigga in December 2022. The case had started earlier, when Abadigga’s brother Ameen opened a missing person’s report. Working with a local investigating officer, Ameen obtained CCTV footage from the Mall of Africa shopping centre showing Abadigga and his bodyguard Kadir Abotese leaving the food court, a man in a blue top following them, and the licence plates of the suspected kidnappers’ vehicles clearly visible on camera. All three vehicles were registered to Peters Communications Trust. At the time, the company’s directors included Maj Gen Herbert Mashego, then commanding officer of 5 Special Forces Regiment.

Police documents indicate that a meeting was subsequently arranged between the investigating officer and high-ranking military officials, including Brig Gen Yalo, then head of special forces. At that meeting, the officer was instructed to tell Ameen there was no link between Peters Communications Trust and the military. When Ameen took his case to the Johannesburg High Court, special forces denied any knowledge of Abadigga’s whereabouts, while simultaneously acknowledging their soldiers had been at the mall that day, claiming a training exercise was underway. They identified the man in the blue top as Maj Wambi, the exercise commander, and confirmed all suspect vehicles belonged to them.

Court documents show that after the alleged abduction, Abadigga’s phone connected to a mast near a military base and was used to call a number in Somalia. The Pentagon did not respond to BBC questions about whether that phone activity helped locate Bilal al-Sudani, a senior IS figure in Somalia killed by US special forces in January 2023, weeks after Abadigga’s disappearance.

When Mathipa was assigned the case a month after the High Court proceedings, he issued a subpoena to special forces demanding full details of the alleged training exercise and all personnel involved. Three months passed. When access to those documents was finally promised, Mathipa went to see his commanding officer, Brig Paulina Sekgobela. “When [Mathipa] left my office he said: ‘Brigadier, you know, these people, they are going to kill me. I’m going to die,’” Sekgobela told the BBC.

On the day he was killed, Mathipa received a call from a man identifying himself as Tebogo, who claimed to have information on the case. His daughter Basetsana, who was home with him, told the BBC that Mathipa and Tebogo arranged to meet at a petrol station in Pretoria. Tebogo did not appear. Mathipa drove away along the highway. He was killed by rounds fired from high-velocity weapons.

After his death, a message was transmitted to police from special forces. According to police documents, it read: “You can appoint 10 investigating officers; we will kill all of them.”

Twelve members of the South African military have since been arrested, among them Lt Col Sunnybooi Wambi and Brig Gen Solomon Lechoenyo, the current head of South Africa’s special forces. Both men have been promoted to their current positions since police began investigating their roles. The twelve face charges variously covering the abduction and murder of Abadigga and Abotese, the murder of Mathipa, fraud, and obstruction. All deny all charges.

Six of the twelve had their bail revoked and were ordered into custody. Three of those six, including Wambi, have been charged with both Mathipa’s murder and Abotese’s abduction and murder. The military has refused to hand them over. In July, their lawyers cited mental health treatment to explain their absence.

The BBC asked the South African army whether it was responsible for Mathipa’s killing. It did not respond. The BBC also asked the army and the Department of Home Affairs whether Abadigga had been smuggled back into South Africa on an expired passport and refugee permit. Neither responded. Former Defence Minister Thandi Modise did not respond to questions about whether she had authorised the Mall of Africa training exercise. President Cyril Ramaphosa declined to comment on that question and on whether Abadigga had been kidnapped at the behest of the US.

Abadigga’s body has never been found. Vreugdenburg, reflecting on what Mathipa had uncovered, told the BBC: “[Mathipa] was barking up the right tree. He was taking on the right lion.” His daughter Basetsana put the family’s position plainly: “We need justice. I’m never going to see my dad anymore. Why my dad? Because he was doing his job.”

Whether the accused will ever face a courtroom remains the central unanswered question.