Sotheni returned to the Brakpan Magistrate's Court for a pre-trial hearing, after being denied bail last month.
Former Saps Special Task Force, Matipandile Sotheni appears at Brakpan Magistrate’s Court for the murder case of Marius van der Merwe. Picture: Gallo Images/OJ Koloti
The case against a former member of the Special Task Force (STF) within the South African Police Service (Saps), Matipandile Sotheni, was postponed on Thursday.
Sotheni returned to the Brakpan Magistrate’s Court for a pre-trial hearing, after being denied bail last month.
The case is connected with the murder of Marius van der Merwe, also known as “Witness D”. Van der Merwe was shot dead at his home in Brakpan on 5 December 2025. His wife and two children survived the shooting.
Sotheni faces 16 charges, including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, three counts of attempted murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, ammunition-related offences, and theft.
Outstanding investigation
On Thursday, the defence was displeased to learn that the investigation into Matipandile’s phones and mapping was still outstanding. This meant the court could not proceed with transferring the case to the High Court for trial.
The court heard that the investigation would be finalised by the next appearance, and the defence would be in possession of the docket.
“The state is of the intention for the docket to be available to the defence so that we can deal with these issues already at the next appearance,” said the State.
“There should be no further delay for purposes of pre-trial issues here. My learned friend must make an effort to have the transfer of the matter done or the authorisation by next time and the indictment so that the matter can then be transferred to the High Court as soon as possible in the hope that the downloading is done quickly and then the mapping will follow,” said the defence.
However, the State said it was “not by choice” that the mapping had not been finalised.
“It depends on the duration of the downloading. So the fact that the downloading was done and it took a while is not really something that could actually be said that the State delayed or something,” it argued.
“It needs to be clear on record that when we postponed the case previously, it was not really for mapping as such, but it was downloads followed by mapping. However, the mapping will be done as the downloads took longer than we had anticipated.”
The case was postponed to 9 September 2026 for the mapping and the tracking of Matipandile’s cell phones.
