Rohde was last month granted leave to appeal his conviction by the Supreme Court of Appeal. His legal team then launched the application for bail, pending the outcome of his appeal. 

The matter was heard at the High Court in Cape Town on Wednesday last week and judgment was reserved. In papers before the court, Rohde had stated that he wanted to be released on bail so that he could attend to his business affairs and maintain his children financially.

Rohde is currently serving an effective 20 years at the Drakenstein Prison in Paarl for killing his wife Susan and obstructing the ends of justice by staging her suicide.

Susan Rohde’s body was found in a locked bathroom in a room she shared with Rohde in July 2016 at the Spier Wine Estate Hotel in Stellenbosch. Her body was found with an electronic cord wrapped around her neck. The cord had been tied to a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

In February, Rohde was sentenced to 18 years for murder by Western Cape High Court Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe, and five years for obstructing the course of justice, with three years of the sentence running concurrently with the murder charge.

According to News24, Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe said it was not a new fact that Rohde was suffering hardship in prison, that his financial affairs were precarious and that he could not afford his legal fees.

Rohde alleged that he had been kept in a single cell at Drakenstein Prison for six months, without interaction with others, for 23 hours a day. He also said he had no access to newspapers, radio and television, and suffered from depression.

She said the defence had abandoned its argument that Rohde was being mistreated in prison.

"Essentially, it boils down to the fact that Mr Rohde finds incarceration unbearable. Mr Rohde, it was argued, wants his 'freedom' and not being 'kept in chains' and 'in a prison cell'," the judge said in her 28-page bail judgment.

Rohde had argued that he needed to be released to deal with a "hostile takeover" of his company, as well as to help avoid a situation where funds for his daughters would run out by the end of the year.

Salie-Hlophe was not persuaded that the facts before her were sufficiently compelling to justify his release.

If anything, the interests of justice required that he continue serving his effective 20-year sentence for killing his wife Susan in 2016, she said.

"Releasing Mr Rohde, who was convicted of the savage murder of his wife, on the basis essentially that he had been granted leave to appeal and that his release would allow him to manage his wealth and other needs and comforts, would threaten law and order," she said.

"It undoubtedly offends the principle of equality and the rule of law which renders all of us equal before the law, irrespective of our economic standing and position in society."

African News Agency (ANA)