Free State Police Commissioner, Baile Motswenyane, revealed in her address at the Ministerial Rural Safety Imbizo in Bethlehem on Thursday, that the 44-year-old Sekola Matlaletsa is presently in police custody for a separate stock theft charge to the Horner murder charge. His alleged accomplice, 32-year-old Sekwetje Mahlamba, has also been linked to the same stock theft incident. 

Motswenyane did not elaborate on the details of that case during her address. Free State police spokesperson, Thandi Mbambo, on the other hand, confirmed to OFM News that the re-arrest occurred shortly after Senekal Magistrate, Deon van Rooyen, granted Matlaletsa R5000 bail on 22 October. Motswenyane’s warns that this additional charge may be the beginning of the worst to come for the duo.

Motswenyane says during the profiling of the suspects in the Horner murder, it was determined they had been linked to seven other stock theft cases. Her office, in collaboration with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in the Free State, will be probing those cases in the hopes of having them placed back on the court rolls.

When Van Rooyen granted bail to the second accused, he cited a lack of direct material evidence as his reason behind the order. Mahlamba is already facing a stock theft charge, and was in fact out on bail when he was nabbed for the farm manager’s brutal murder. Matlaletsa, who has a longer rap sheet, was convicted of stock theft in the past.

OFM News previously reported that Van Rooyen made an impassioned plea to Police Minister, Bheki Cele, urging him to use his influence to expedite investigations into the murder of Horner. Whilst delivering his ruling on the bail applications in the Senekal Magistrate's Court in late October, Van Rooyen reflected on the sensitivity of the case, furthermore expressing his concerns regarding the possibility of delays, specifically with regards to DNA analysis. The Magistrate said briefly, that in his experience, the backlog at the state forensic laboratory could set the trial back anywhere from around 6 months to a year. With this in mind, he called for investigations to be expedited, especially in light of the sensitivity of the case. The magistrate spoke on how the 21-year-old’s murder has brought “racial tensions, economic divisions in this small town, and the mistrust in the police” to the fore.

This as a 56-year-old farmer, Pieter Hills, was recently found dead on his Swartpan farm at Hennenman, while his 26-year-old son, Eddie, later died at the Milpark Hospital from injuries sustained in the attack. In another incident, a 37-year-old farmer in Odendaalsrus, Tebogo Machakela, who was brutally attacked and shot by a group of attackers on his farm in August this year, succumbed to his injuries last week. In the third case, a 60-year-old farmer, Dave Wessels, from Viljoenskroon, was found dead in his bedroom last month after a robbery. More recently, Free State farmer, Mark Regal, was shot dead by a suspect on Wednesday night on the Thelma Farm outside Odendaalsrus.

OFM News