Ukrainian businessman Ivan Ivanov with his family.
- The man who murdered hiker Ivan Ivanov outside Hout Bay has been sent to prison for 25 years.
- The court deviated from the life sentence, feeling that he had shown remorse and could be rehabilitated.
- Sinaye Mposelwa said he had fallen in with the wrong crowd in an upbringing where he was mostly left to fend for himself.
The man who pleaded guilty to stabbing Ukrainian businessman Ivan Ivanov to death was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday as the Western Cape High Court showed a measure of mercy by deviating from a life sentence.
Sinaye Mposelwa pleaded guilty to the premeditated murder of Ivanov just as he set off for a hike from East Fort above Chapman’s Peak Drive on 27 July 2019. A couple walking their dog abandoned their walk when they saw Mposelwa and two alleged accomplices behaving erratically, eventually hiding in a bush as they approached.
After four years awaiting trial, Mposelwa was caught red-handed and came clean about his role in the tragedy.
He was also convicted of robbery with aggravating circumstances. His matter was separated from his alleged accomplices, Matthew Giyo and Franklin Isaacs, and they are on trial, having pleaded not guilty.
In his plea agreement, Mposelwa said they had laid in wait with knives to rob whoever came past them, and when they ambushed Ivanov, he had fought back, so he was stabbed 11 times and left for dead.
Local security companies and paramedics acted quickly once the alarm was raised by the couple walking their dog, but the married dad with two children did not survive.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said the Criminal Law Amendment Act prescribed a minimum sentence of life imprisonment for premeditated murder and 15 years imprisonment for robbery with aggravating circumstances, unless there were compelling circumstances to deviate.
Prosecutor Thamsanqa Kwetane said Ivanov’s murder was not only a loss to the agriculture sector, where he trained South African companies, but that the family had lost their breadwinner too.
He pointed out that the community had resisted a vigilante attack and was expecting an appropriate sentence.
The defence felt that Mposelwa’s guilty plea had saved the court time and asked that his four years awaiting trial be taken into consideration in the sentence. However, Mposelwa does not want to testify against his co-accused because of being threatened by a prison gang.
READ | He murdered a Ukrainian hiker because of peer pressure and bad parents, killer tells court
His plea agreement provided detail of what happened, but did not mention his co-accused. He said that his life would be in danger from a prison gang, which wanted a different approach to how the case should be handled, if he revealed more details than he had done.
His advocate Charles Simon told the court during pre-sentencing agreements that Mposelwa was a school drop-out who had very little family support, and had fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Judge Robert Henney found that, when Mposelwa told the court what he felt he safely could, he had showed genuine remorse for what he was caught up in.
“He also does not come across as a hardened criminal. It seems that this was a situation of a young man who was led astray by the company he keeps, that needs to be punished but not removed from society permanently using a sentence of life imprisonment.”
Mposelwa was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for the murder and 10 years imprisonment for robbery with aggravating circumstances. The sentences are to run concurrently.
A 25-year sentence, unlike a life sentence, offers the possibility of parole at a later stage, depending on an inmate’s rehabilitation.
He was also declared unfit to possess a firearm in terms of Section 103 of the Firearms Control Act. The most common effect of this is mostly on the future work prospects of a person who may want to apply for a job as an armed security guard after incarceration.