On 24 July 2023, for reasons that remain unknown to Daily Maverick, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed an order that discharged Judge Cassim Sardiwalla from his duties at the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria. As the trial judge in the Fred Daniel matter, Sardiwalla was presiding over evidence that implicated David Mabuza, South Africa's former deputy president, in a large Mpumalanga criminal enterprise. Was there a conspiracy to quash the case?

Seal of the Republic

'This de novo trial must also be held in open court."

If ever there was a sentence that revealed the intentions of the state defendants in case number 34502/2010 of the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria, the infamous R1-billion civil claim that had been lodged by conservationist Fred Daniel against the Mpumalanga provincial government all the way back in July 2010, these few words appeared to qualify on every count.

For starters, there was the Latin phrase "de novo," which translates as "from the beginning" or "anew".

In the letter that state attorney Nelson Govender sent to Daniel's lawyers on 9 November 2023, three days after the sixth session of the marathon trial was due to kick off, the phrase was repeated more than half-a-dozen times.

In other words, after more than 13 years of litigation, comprising millions of pages of correspondence, countless aborted case management sessions and upwards of 180 court days, the government defendants were now arguing that the whole thing needed to start again from scratch.

"It is trite law that when proceedings are commenced de novo," Govender wrote, "it is neither permissible nor desirable for the new presiding judge...