Seven members of South Africa's special forces and one military police officer have been charged with murdering a senior police detective who was investigating an alleged abduction carried out by the military, according to evidence shared with the BBC. All eight deny the charges.
Lt Col Frans Mathipa, a respected detective and father of five who worked for South Africa's elite police unit known as "The Hawks", was shot dead in August 2023 while driving home along a motorway outside Pretoria. His car was found overturned after he was hit by rounds fired from high-velocity weapons that police say special forces would have had access to.
The BBC World Service has been given exclusive access to the prosecution case against the men, including several hundred pages of secret police and court documents, and has interviewed key sources including South Africa's former head of counter-terrorism in The Hawks, Mathipa's commanding officer, and his family.
The documents show that a vehicle which trailed Mathipa shortly before he was shot was registered to a company called Peters Communications Trust (PCT), which police say is a front company for South African special forces. Tracking data from the vehicle is said to place it at the scene of the shooting. One of the men in the car, Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, had also been identified at the scene of a separate alleged abduction that Mathipa had been investigating.
The South African army did not respond when asked by the BBC whether it was responsible for Mathipa's killing.
Mathipa had been investigating the disappearance of Abdella Abadigga, an Ethiopian man who had been granted temporary asylum in South Africa in 2008 before being arrested abroad in 2017. According to Col Tollie Vreugdenburg, the former head of counter-terrorism in The Hawks, Abadigga was then smuggled back into South Africa by the military and the Department of Home Affairs to be used as an intelligence asset, but had since "gone rogue" and extorted Johannesburg's Ethiopian community to fund the Islamic State group, according to the US government.
Abadigga had been placed under US sanctions in 2022, which designated him an Islamic State recruiter and fundraiser and a trusted supporter of Bilal al-Sudani, a senior Islamic State figure in Somalia. Mathipa was examining allegations that special forces had abducted and killed Abadigga in December 2022.
Court documents show that after Abadigga's alleged abduction, his phone connected to a mast near a military base and police sources say it was used to call a number in Somalia. The Pentagon did not respond when asked by the BBC whether Abadigga's phone had helped locate al-Sudani, who was killed by US special forces in Somalia in January 2023, weeks after the alleged abduction. President Cyril Ramaphosa declined to comment when asked whether Abadigga had been kidnapped at the behest of the US.
CCTV footage from the Mall of Africa shopping centre, seen by the BBC, shows the last known movements of Abadigga and his bodyguard, Kadir Abotese, before their disappearance. The footage shows a man in a blue top following the pair and paying for parking moments after they did. Vehicles visible in the footage were registered to PCT, the alleged special forces front company, whose directors at the time included Maj Gen Herbert Mashego, then commanding officer of 5 Special Forces Regiment.
Police documents state that a meeting was arranged between the investigating officer on Abadigga's missing person's case and senior military figures, including the then head of special forces, at which the officer was instructed to tell Abadigga's brother, Ameen, that there was no link between PCT and the military. Ameen subsequently took his case to the Johannesburg High Court. In response, special forces denied knowledge of Abadigga's whereabouts but admitted their soldiers had been at the Mall of Africa for a training exercise, naming the man in blue as Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, the exercise commander, and confirming that the vehicles seen belonged to them.
Domestic military operations in South Africa require authorisation from both the government and the presidency. Former Defence Minister Thandi Modise did not respond, and President Ramaphosa declined to comment, when asked whether they had authorised a training exercise at the mall.
When Mathipa was assigned to the case, he issued a subpoena requiring special forces to hand over details of the alleged exercise and the personnel involved. According to Brig Paulina Sekgobela, his commanding officer, Mathipa told her he feared he would be killed after finally being promised access to the documents. "When he left my office he said: 'Brigadier, you know, these people – they are going to kill me. I'm going to die,'" she told the BBC.
On the day he died, Mathipa was contacted by a man calling himself Tebogo, who claimed to have information on the case, according to Mathipa's daughter, Basetsana, who was at home with him at the time. The two arranged to meet at a petrol station, but when the man failed to appear, Mathipa drove off along the motorway, where he was shot. Footage from motorway toll gantries is said to show Maj Sunnybooi Wambi among the occupants of the vehicle that tailed him.
Following Mathipa's death, a message reportedly reached the police's Criminal Intelligence division warning that special forces would kill any further investigating officers assigned to the case, according to police documents.
Twelve members of the South African military have since been arrested, including Wambi and the current head of special forces, Brig Gen Solomon Lechoenyo, both of whom have been promoted since the investigation began. They face charges including abduction, murder, fraud and obstruction, and all deny the charges. Six had their bail revoked, but three have refused to comply with the court order, with lawyers citing mental health treatment for their absence in July. No trial date has been set, and 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, said: "We need justice. I'm never going to see my dad anymore... Why my dad? Because he was doing his job."
