In November 2025, six weeks after the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria had declared a resounding victory for conservationist Fred Daniel in his decades-long legal battle with former deputy president David Mabuza, the state attorney announced its intention to appeal against the decision. But now, among other inconsistencies, Daily Maverick’s reporting has revealed that the first government defendant can no longer afford to run the case. So why is the justice ministry refusing to answer our questions?
“So, the application for my recusal must fail at the first hurdle, which is that there is no person associated with these proceedings who believes I was biased,” said Judge Neil Tuchten, in all seriousness, on 27 February 2025. “It would be absurd for a litigant to say, personally, I do not believe that the judge was biased, but a reasonable person would so believe.” As implied in the judge’s words, the “absurd” scenario had just come to pass — despite the fact that the affidavits of both parties had praised the jurist as “distinguished,” the government defendants had sought his recusal anyway. The “double requirement of reasonableness” for a judge’s recusal, which demands an assumption of prejudice by at least one of the litigants, had set the stage for a blatant own goal.
Effectively, the legal team for the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA), the first defendant in case number 34502/2010 of the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria, had argued that the hypothetical “reasonable person” was somehow more reasonable than any of them. But as absurd as it was, it appeared to be simply more of the same. The case, which had been lodged in July 2010, had so far worked through two high court judges (Tuchten was its third judicial officer), hundreds of days of lawfare-inspired delays and around R30-million in legal fees for the MTPA alone (see below).
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As Daily Maverick hadconcludedin a number of in-depth reports, the taxpayer was funding a strategy to indefinitely defer the judgment. And so Judge Tuchten, by all accounts, was having none of it — the MTPA’s application for his recusal was dismissed with costs. The next day, lead plaintiff Fred Daniel returned to the witness box.
Seven months later, on 30 September 2025, the judge handed down hishistorical ruling, which decreed, for the first time, that Mpumalanga strongman David Mabuza — South Africa’s former deputy president, who had died in early July — was a primary architect of the so-called “land claims scam”. “This was no single act by a single state actor,” the judgment declared on page 162. “It was a concerted campaign over several years by members of the executive in the province, in league with high officials in at least two organs of state which, by the public powers vested in them by law, were in a unique position to intimidate Mr Daniel and frustrate the realisation of his dream.
They enlisted in their scheme a criminal mob and instructed the SA Police [Service] to stand aside while the mob did its work.” As recompense for this “collusive agreement” between state actors, Judge Tuchten awarded Daniel the sum of R306-million (minus interest and costs) in damages. And yet, of the 25 government defendants listed in the court papers, it was ultimately only the MTPA and the Regional Land Claims Commissioner (RLCC) that were “jointly and severally” held liable. “I have said that this case is, as far as I know, unique in our jurisprudence,” Tuchten noted on page 178.
“The wickedness of the conduct of the MTPA and the RLCC, acting in concert with the other parties I have found to have banded together to oppress Mr Daniel and drive him from the district, is profound.” In light of such scathing pronouncements, it was perhaps unsurprising that the office of the state attorney — in a series of letters to Daniel’s attorney, dated November 2025 — would notify the plaintiffs of the intention to take the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal. To Daily Maverick, however, whatwassurprising was what had been revealed in thelatest iterationof the MTPA’s annual report, signed off on 30 August 2025. “The MTPA has made a payment arrangement with the [Department of Justice and Constitutional Development] of reasonable monthly instalments towards settling these owing legal fees,” the report noted, on page 25, with respect to case number 34502/2010.
“The future payable fees are not known but would be substantial given the complex nature of this matter and the likely period it may take to finalise this court case. The legal fees incurred in this case are not affordable for the MTPA.”
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