Zurenah Smit's health crisis delays murder trial of Stefan Smit

The murder trial of slain wine farmer Stefan Smit has faced yet another delay, with the doctor who treated Zurenah Smit—one of the accused—set to testify in the Western Cape High Court on Thursday.

On Monday, Zurenah, was not at court due to hospitalisation on the evening of November 16. 

The court ordered that the attending doctor must testify at court on Thursday regarding Zurenah's medical position. 

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 from the case.

A week before the recusal application, Judge Derek 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 R9,200.

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. 
 

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