The NPA has lost a High Court application to seize an Mpumalanga man’s bakkie for a cannabis-related offence after the Judge found that it had misled the court by withholding crucial information. This is the second time in six months that the NPA has been chastised by the Mpumalanga judiciary for over-reach.
The state’s attempted cannabis-related forfeiture seizure of an Mpumalanga man’s bakkie was dismissed by acting judge JT Leso in the Mbombela High Court after he found the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) had withheld crucial information in its court application.
Strong case, but NPA took a chance by withholding crucial information
He said that even though the white Ford Clubb Cab Ranger could conceivably have been used as an “instrumentality in the trafficking of narcotics”, the State had concealed certain facts from the court, and therefore its application had to be dismissed on procedural grounds.
What was not in dispute was that 56 rolls of cannabis, weighing over 110 kg and valued at R330 000, were found in the vehicle during a police operation near Kaapmuiden in March 2026. The driver, Auto Mdudzi Nkosi, was arrested and charged under the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act, and the bakkie was impounded by the state. .
Although the case against Nkosi is still pending, his lawyers applied to the court on 10 August 2026 for his vehicle to be released by the state. After the NPA failed to oppose the motion, the vehicle was then returned to the owner.
In its application, the NPA did not reveal that the order to release the vehicle had already been made, and instead tried to convince the court that the magistrate’s decision was not legally correct and that any order he may have made would have been invalid.
In dismissing the application, Judge Leso concluded that this did not mean that he was making any findings on the magistrate’s decision: “It means only that the NDPP was not entitled, on the basis of its own characterisation of the order, to treat it as non-existent. This distinction is important, categorical, if not dispositive.”
The Judge said that the issue before him is “whether the applicant has established a proper basis for the relief sought notwithstanding the existence of an extant court order directing the release of the very property which it now seeks to preserve” and he found that it hadn’t.
Judge: NDPP Ought to Know Better
He continued: “A further difficulty arises from the NDPP’s failure to disclose the release order in the application. The NDPP, too, ought to know that it was required to place before this Court all material facts in the utmost good faith or uberrima fides, including those facts which might operate against the relief sought.”
“For these reasons, although the evidence establishes a sufficient factual basis for the alleged ‘instrumentality’ of the vehicle, I am not persuaded that the applicant has established a proper basis upon which this Court should grant the preservation order in the circumstances in which the application was brought. The application must accordingly fail.”
This is the second time in recent months that the NPA has come in for a lashing from the Mbombela High Court over attempts to seize assets in alleged cannabis dealing offences. It dismissed an application to seize a property belonging to an elderly couple who’s grandson was growing cannabis on the premises. In dismissing the application the judge accused the NPA of over-reach, saying the NPA’s action was ‘constitutionally distasteful’
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