Rail theft trial stalls again as accused appears without a lawyer for the seventh time

The fraud trial over the sale of 42km of state railway line in the Eastern Cape stalled again in the Gqeberha Commercial Crimes Court on Tuesday, when accused number one Nadir Mohiudeen appeared without legal representation for the seventh time.

As CapeTown ETC reported on 30 September, citing GroundUp, Mohiudeen told the court he had approached his original attorney, Henry van Breda, to represent him, but that van Breda was unavailable on the dates set for the hearing. He said he had fully paid his attorneys and had come prepared for the trial to continue.

Presiding magistrate Thabisa Mpimpilashe expressed frustration at the situation and, after taking note that the court had twice warned it would proceed if Mohiudeen failed to obtain legal representation, said she would rule on Wednesday morning on how to proceed. She warned him to be ready for any eventuality.

Mohiudeen and Mthuthuzeli Swartz, a former PRASA Western Cape regional manager who was briefly appointed acting CEO of PRASA Rail in 2018 while the criminal case was pending, were arrested in early 2019. They stand accused of selling off a disused Transnet railway line between Sterkstroom and Nqanqarhu, formerly Maclear, to Durban-based company Akisisa in late 2012.

Swartz was represented on Tuesday by advocate Mzwamadoda Mnyani, instructed by attorney Julian Lindor of BNI Attorneys.

According to state prosecutor Gerrit van der Merwe, the attorneys YG & Associates withdrew as attorneys of record for Mohiudeen on 24 August after being advised by East London firm Magqabi Seth Zita Attorneys that Mohiudeen had instructed them to represent him. On 26 August, MSZ Attorneys told the state they would not be representing him because the client appeared unable to honour his financial undertaking to them.

At the May hearing, the court heard that YG & Associates had withdrawn over non-payment of fees. The following day advocate Cheryl Sjoberg appeared for Mohiudeen on the firm’s instruction, and the state continued with an application to allow virtual cross-examination of witnesses. That application was granted by Mpimpilashe on 9 June, partly because many witnesses are outside the country and the state had already spent money arranging for them to appear in person only for postponements to follow.

The trial itself only got underway in March last year. Former Akisisa general manager Adrian Samuels testified that Mohiudeen, through his company Spanish Ice, had brokered a deal through Swartz to sell the rail for scrap. Samuels said Akisisa paid R1.5-million as a deposit before moving to uplift the rail, logistics that cost the company R3.5-million. Transnet security guards stopped the removal in early February 2013.

Samuels’s cross-examination, which began in March 2025, has still not been completed. This week was the seventh time hearings have been set down since the trial started. The intervening hearings were disrupted by Samuels being ill, by Mohiudeen changing lawyers, by Samuels being unable to travel from Dubai where he now works, by the application for virtual testimony, and earlier this month by the magistrate being ill.

Before the trial began, it was delayed by further changes of lawyer, attempts to obtain court transcripts, an unsuccessful application by Swartz for a separation of trials, and an application by Mohiudeen to the high court for a review of magistrate Nolitha Bara’s dismissal of his request for further particulars of the case against him. That review took two years to be heard, from December 2022 to December 2024, and was dismissed. At that hearing Mohiudeen told Judge Avinash Govindjee and Acting Judge Nicholas Mullins that he had tried to get Legal Aid representation. Judge Govindjee noted that Legal Aid turned down the application on the basis that it had no real prospects of success.

The case matters beyond the courtroom. The line between Sterkstroom and Nqanqarhu was disused when it was allegedly sold, but the theft of rail and other infrastructure has been a running cost for Transnet and PRASA for years, and it is ultimately carried by passengers and by the fiscus. The central line in Cape Town, the country’s busiest commuter corridor, has been the most visible example, with services repeatedly suspended by vandalism and cable theft. Cape Town has urged Prasa to root out gang connections in central line contracts.

The seven-year gap between arrest and the completion of the state’s first witness is the kind of delay that South African courts and the National Prosecuting Authority have themselves flagged as a risk to complex commercial cases, where memories fade, witnesses move abroad and accused persons can change representation repeatedly. The state’s application for virtual testimony was an attempt to manage exactly that problem.

A reader who wants to follow the matter should note Wednesday morning’s ruling, which will determine whether the trial proceeds with Mohiudeen unrepresented or is postponed again.

Source: CapeTown ETC, Rail theft case: accused changes lawyers for 7th time