‘Possibility of fabrication exists’: State and Brown Mogotsi defence at odds over concealing witness details

FILE| Businessman and alleged political fixer Brown Mogotsi appears at Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, 28 May 2026, for a bail application. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen It was a brief appearance in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court for alleged political fixer Brown Mogotsi, where the state and defence clashed over the handing over of witness names and addresses. Mogotsi was arrested on 15 May and charged with defeating the ends of justice, perjury, unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, as well as discharging a firearm in a public or municipal area.

Mogotsi is accused of orchestrating his own attempted assassination on3 November 2025in Vosloorus. On Monday, Mogotsi returned to the court for a pre-trial hearing, where the state indicated it was ready to proceed to trial. However, Mogotsi’s lawyer, Makau Sekgatja, argued against this, saying the state was yet to hand over witness statements.

Sekgatja raised concerns about challenges consulting with his client, saying he could not prepare thoroughly because the state had not provided certain requested statements. “As far back as 10 July, we requested statements of witnesses and an email was sent to the state requesting the same on 10 July, which was met with a response on 15 July. This particular email attached a letter from our office wherein we were requesting several statements,” Sekgatja told the court.

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“Your Worship, these particular statements are very crucial for the purpose of consultation. Now, only this morning before the court actually walked in, the state furnished us with some of the statements which we actually requested. That is unfair to the defence.

“The state cannot now come and say we are ready to set down the matter for trial and ignore the fact that they only gave us some of these particular statements this morning.” Sekgatja said he had requested 10 statements from the state and had only received six on Monday morning. Even those provided had been redacted where witnesses’ names and addresses appeared, something the defence took issue with. “I’m still going to go through the email just to check which statements are still outstanding in relation to what we have actually requested. But from the initial email and our request, there were 10 which were requested,” said Sekgatja.

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