Detective's Murder Evidence Reaches BBC as South African Investigators Fear for Their Safe

SPECIAL FORCES CHARGED IN DETECTIVE’S DEATH AS INVESTIGATION STALLS

Lt Col Frans Mathipa spent four months pursuing a single piece of evidence. When officials finally promised to deliver it, he told his commanding officer he believed it would cost him his life.

Two days later, his car lay overturned on a Pretoria highway. He had been shot dead while driving.

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. They deny all charges. Three years after his killing, no trial date has been set, and three of the accused remain at large, still employed by the military. One has been promoted since the investigation began.

The BBC obtained exclusive access to hundreds of pages of secret police and court documents forming the prosecution case. Interviews with Mathipa’s commanding officer, the former head of counter-terrorism in the elite police unit known as The Hawks, and Mathipa’s family reveal the events that led to his death and the apparent obstruction that has followed.

Mathipa was investigating the disappearance of Abdella Abadigga, an Ethiopian man alleged to be an Islamic State militant. Abadigga had been granted temporary asylum in South Africa in 2008 but was arrested abroad in 2017. According to Col Tollie Vreugdenburg, former head of counter-terrorism in The Hawks, Abadigga was then smuggled back into South Africa by the military and Department of Home Affairs to serve as an intelligence asset. He later went rogue, extorting Johannesburg’s Ethiopian neighbourhood to fund IS operations, according to US government sources.

The investigation into Abadigga’s disappearance began with his brother, Ameen, who opened a missing person’s case shortly after December 2022, when Abadigga vanished. Working with a local police investigating officer, Ameen obtained CCTV footage from the Mall of Africa, a shopping centre on Johannesburg’s outskirts, showing Abadigga and his bodyguard Kadir Abotese leaving the food court. The footage captured a man in a blue top following them and paying for parking three seconds after they did. More critically, the licence plates of the vehicles involved were clearly visible.

All three vehicles were registered to Peters Communications Trust, a front company for South African special forces. At the time, the trust’s directors included Maj Gen Herbert Mashego, the commanding officer of 5 Special Forces Regiment.

When Ameen took his case to the Johannesburg High Court, special forces responded by denying knowledge of Abadigga’s whereabouts. Yet they admitted their soldiers had been at the mall that day, claiming a training exercise. They identified the man in blue as Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, the exercise commander, and acknowledged that all suspect vehicles belonged to them.

Mathipa was assigned the case a month later and issued a subpoena forcing special forces to provide full details of the alleged training exercise and personnel involved. When access to those documents was finally promised three months later, he expressed his fears directly to his commanding officer, Brig Paulina Sekgobela.

“When he 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 of his death, Mathipa received a call from someone claiming to be Tebogo, who said he had information relevant to the case. They arranged to meet at a petrol station in Pretoria. When Tebogo did not appear, Mathipa drove away along the highway. He was killed by rounds from high-velocity weapons consistent with special forces arsenals.

Police documents show that a black BMW tailed Mathipa moments before his murder. Motorway toll gantry footage identified one occupant as Maj Sunnybooi Wambi. The vehicle, like those connected to Abadigga’s disappearance, was registered to Peters Communications Trust.

After Mathipa’s death, new detectives were assigned to the case. Police documents record a chilling message from special forces: “You can appoint 10 investigating officers; we will kill all of them.”

Twelve military members have been arrested in total, including Wambi and Brig Gen Solomon Lechoenyo, the current head of South Africa’s special forces. Both have been promoted to their positions since the investigation began. Six had their bail revoked and were ordered to turn themselves in, but the military has refused to hand them over. Three of the six, charged with both Mathipa’s murder and involvement in Abadigga’s abduction and death, remain at large.

Abadigga’s body has never been found.

“He was barking up the right tree. He was taking on the right lion,” Vreugdenburg said of Mathipa.

His daughter Basetsana carries that absence every day. “We need justice. I’m never going to see my dad anymore. Why my dad? Because he was doing his job.”

Whether the military will ever surrender the remaining accused, or whether a trial date will be set at all, is a question Basetsana and the rest of Mathipa’s family are still waiting for someone to answer.