Detective's Fatal Premonition; South African Special Forces Accused in Murder

Frans Mathipa told his commanding officer he expected to die. “When he left my office he said: ‘Brigadier, you know, these people, they will kill me. I will die,’” Brigadier Paulina Sekgobela recalled to the BBC. Two days after Mathipa learned that a crucial informant would soon become available to him, someone shot him dead on a South African highway. He had been right.

Mathipa was a senior detective with The Hawks, South Africa’s elite investigative unit. He had spent four months building a case that his superiors and colleagues now believe got him killed. His daughter Basetsana was at home with him on the day he died. She watched him take a phone call from a man who identified himself as Tebogo, claiming to have information about the case. Mathipa drove to a petrol station in Pretoria to meet him. Tebogo never showed. Mathipa pulled back onto the highway, and that is where high-velocity gunfire struck him down.

Additional reference context is available at https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/articles/c0ej7n9yw28o.

He had been investigating the disappearance of Abdella Abadigga, an Ethiopian national who South African authorities had granted temporary asylum in 2008, arrested abroad in 2017, and then, according to Colonel Tollie Vreugdenburg, former head of counter-terrorism at The Hawks, smuggled back into the country to use as an intelligence asset. Abadigga later “went rogue,” Vreugdenburg said. In December 2022, he was allegedly abducted and killed. His body has never been found.

Mathipa had been building on work that Abadigga’s brother, Ameen, had already started. Together they obtained CCTV footage from the Mall of Africa shopping centre showing Abadigga’s last known movements. The footage captured license plates belonging to vehicles registered to Peters Communications Trust (PCT), a company that serves as a front for South African special forces operations.

When Mathipa issued a subpoena demanding full details of an alleged special forces training exercise at the mall that day, the pressure on him intensified. Special forces had initially denied any knowledge of Abadigga, then admitted their personnel had been present, framing it as routine training. They identified the man in the blue shirt on the CCTV as Major Sunnybooi Wambi, the exercise commander.

Motorway toll gantry footage from the day of Mathipa’s murder places Wambi inside a black BMW that had been following Mathipa moments before the shooting. That vehicle, too, was registered to PCT. Tracking data also places a PCT vehicle at the scene of the killing. The United States had sanctioned Abadigga that same year as an Islamic State recruiter and fundraiser, and court documents show that after his alleged abduction, his phone connected to a cell tower near a military base and was used to call a number in Somalia.

Seven members of South Africa’s special forces and one military police officer now face murder charges in connection with Mathipa’s death in August 2023. All have denied the allegations. Twelve military personnel have been arrested in total, including Wambi and Brigadier General Solomon Lechoenyo, the current head of South African special forces. Both men have been promoted to their current positions since the investigation began. All twelve face charges including the abduction and murder of Abadigga and his bodyguard Kadir Abotese, Mathipa’s murder, fraud, and obstruction of justice.

The BBC World Service obtained exclusive access to prosecution documents in the case, reviewing hundreds of pages of secret police and court records. The investigation draws on interviews with Vreugdenburg, Sekgobela, and members of Mathipa’s family.

After Mathipa’s death, police assigned new detectives to the case. Special forces responded by issuing a warning through the police Criminal Intelligence division: no matter how many investigating officers were assigned, “we will kill all of them,” according to police records. The court initially released the suspects on bail, then revoked bail for six of them. The military has refused to hand over three of those six, including Wambi. Their lawyers reported in July that they were receiving mental health treatment.

Basetsana put it plainly: “We need justice. I will never see my dad anymore. Why my dad? Because he was doing his job.”

Vreugdenburg offered his own assessment of the detective’s work: “He was barking up the right tree. He was taking on the right lion.”

More than three years after Mathipa’s death, no trial date has been set. The question hanging over South Africa’s courts, its military, and one family still waiting for answers is whether anyone will ever be held to account.