Dramatic court collapse delays murder trial of wine farmer Stefan Smit

As the murder trial of slain wine farmer Stefan Smit hit another delay, the doctor who attended to murder accused Zurenah Smit after she collapsed in the dock on Monday will testify in the Western Cape High Court tomorrow. 

On Monday, Zurenah appeared alongside her co-accused Derek Sait, when she suddenly collapsed in the dock as State prosecutor advocate Rene Uys read out the indictment.

Zurenah was wheeled out of court by emergency services, and afterwards she was hospitalised to receive further medical care. 

The matter has been marred with delays ahead of the defence having to argue their case, which included an interlocutory application to have the presiding Judge Derek Wille recuse himself.

A week before the recusal application, Judge Wille denied Smit and Sait’s Section 174 application, in which they sought to have criminal charges against them discharged. The pair pleaded not guilty to all 16 criminal charges preferred against them.

Judge Wille, in dismissing the Section 174 application, said the accused face a “tsunami of prima facie evidence”.

Last week at the hearing of the recusal application, through her legal counsel, Zurenah submitted that Judge Wille “has already decided on my guilt and this shows bias”. 

Further in her application, supported by Sait, Zurenah submitted that the judge found the investigation officer's work commendable.

Some of the charges the two face, and if sustained, carry a prescribed sentence of life imprisonment.

The State’s indictment sketches the alleged masterminding of Stefan’s murder on June 2, 2019, where he was shot multiple times at Louisenhof Farm in Stellenbosch in what was made to look like a robbery. 

Among the charges filed against them is robbery with aggravating circumstances. It is alleged that in November 2018, Zurenah and Sait gave Stefan sleeping tablets or sedative substances and stole R235 000, a 9mm pistol, three Kruger Rands valued at R20 650 each, a Mandela coin worth R23 000, and a 0.5oz Kruger Rand worth R9200.

Zurenah is also accused of fraud in that she falsely and unlawfully, with the intention to defraud, purported to be in possession of the last will and testament of her deceased mother-in-law (Stefan’s mother) after she allegedly forged the signatures.

In the document, she is alleged to have removed beneficiaries and made herself a major benefactor and the sole heir of the remainder of her late mother-in-law’s estate. 

In one of the three fraud charges she faces, the State alleges that Zurenah unlawfully, falsely, and with the intent to defraud, potentially prejudicing Stefan's children, bequeathed to herself, among several assets, R7 million, the Louisenhof Farm, and appointed herself as the director and/or trustee of three trusts belonging to Stefan.