High Court ruling looms on struck-off bid in Transnet case

The Johannesburg High Court is preparing to rule on whether a multimillion-rand corruption case against former Transnet executives should be struck from the roll because delays in getting it to trial have become unreasonable. The decision will test how South Africa’s criminal justice system handles one of its own most persistent problems: the trial that never begins.

The case was enrolled in 2022 and scheduled for trial in February. It has yet to start. Repeated postponements have kept it in limbo, and the question before the court is whether those delays have crossed the line set by the Criminal Procedure Act itself.

At the centre of the dispute is Section 342A of the Criminal Procedure Act, which empowers a court to intervene when criminal proceedings are unreasonably delayed. The State and the defence are at loggerheads over an application brought under that provision. The defence argues that the passage of time and the difficulty of accessing evidence have prejudiced their ability to prepare for trial. The State contests that framing.

The delays have not been incidental. An interlocutory application has bogged down the proceedings, and some of the accused have run out of funds, leaving the case stalled on multiple fronts. Evidence access has emerged as a central grievance. The accused wanted the State to pay for an estimated R1.6 million tool needed to download 49 terabytes of evidence the State has amassed. At the last appearance, the court ordered software experts to convene and report back on how the accused can gain access to that data.

The stakes for public accountability are substantial. Former Transnet executives Brian Molefe, Anoj Singh, and Siyabonga Gama are among those facing charges of fraud, corruption, money laundering, and contraventions of the Public Finance Management Act. The charges arise from Transnet’s procurement of 1,064 locomotives worth more than R54 billion in 2012.

The State’s allegations go to the heart of how that procurement was managed. Prosecutors allege that Regiments Capital was irregularly brought into the contract, and that its appointment increased the value and scope of the contract by more than R305 million. The accused also face allegations relating to a R93.4 million payment to Trillian Asset Management in 2015.

For the oversight architecture underpinning prosecutions of state capture era misconduct, the ruling carries weight beyond this docket. A case struck off the roll would raise hard questions about whether the institutions responsible for bringing such matters to trial can manage complex prosecutions within reasonable timeframes. A case allowed to continue would signal that the courts will tolerate the delays, at least for now, in the interest of seeing the charges tested.

Meanwhile, the tension between the two positions is not easily resolved. The defence’s complaint about evidence access is, in part, a complaint about the State’s own handling of its case. Forty-nine terabytes of material is a formidable volume, and the court’s decision to order software experts to convene reflects an attempt to find a practical path through a technical impasse. Whether that path can be found in time to salvage a trial date remains to be seen.

The High Court’s ruling is expected shortly. Whichever way it goes, the decision will speak to a question that has shadowed South Africa’s accountability project since the first state capture cases were enrolled: whether the machinery of prosecution can move fast enough for justice to remain meaningful. For the former executives in the dock, for the State, and for the public watching the outcome, that question is now in the hands of the court.