Dippenaar loses Supreme Court bid

The Supreme Court has refused Jandre Dippenaar leave to appeal against his murder convictions and 15-year prison sentence for a 2014 crash near Henties Bay in which six people died.

Deputy chief justice Petrus Damaseb and acting judges of appeal Dave Smuts and Theo Frank refused the petition in chambers on 23 September.

"The petition for leave to appeal against the convictions and sentences are refused," the order reads.

The petition followed a High Court judgment of 5 June, in which High Court judges Naomi Shivute and Dinah Usiku refused Dippenaar condonation for filing his application for leave to appeal late and dismissed the application.

"Having given the application considerable objective thought, we have no reasonable doubt that the applicant was properly convicted of the charges preferred against him," Shivute wrote, with Usiku concurring.

The application was filed on 31 December 2025, outside the 14-day limit set by the Criminal Procedure Act. The State said it was 12 days late. The court did not accept the explanation for the delay, but said Dippenaar should not be penalised for it and allowed the merits to be argued.

He raised 56 grounds of appeal in a 38-page document. Among them, he argued that the driver of the Ford Ranger caused the collision by swerving into his lane and that the court gave too little weight to defence expert evidence.

"We are satisfied that the evidence adduced by the respondent proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the applicant was the sole cause of the accident," the judges found.

The same judges dismissed his appeal against the convictions and sentence on 5 December 2025.

‘Foresaw the consequences’

In that judgment, they upheld the trial court's finding that Dippenaar drove recklessly between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund on the day of the crash. A police officer stopped him after a report and warned him not to drive as he did.

"The evidence shows that the way he drove that day alarmed other road users to the point that they felt compelled to report him to the police. Even after being warned to drive responsibly, the appellant did not stop," the judgment reads.

The judges said that as Dippenaar was a champion rally driver overtaking a vehicle over a blind rise in the face of an oncoming vehicle, "the possible consequence of death must have been obvious to him".

"He foresaw the consequences of his dangerous driving, factored them into the bargain, and proceeded regardless," they found.

The court also considered whether Dippenaar had accepted the possibility of his own death.

"Although there is no evidence that he was suicidal, there can be no doubt that, given the dangerous way he drove that day and the fact that he was warned by the police of his dangerous driving that could be harmful to other road users and himself, he must have been indifferent as to whether he would live or die," the judgment reads.

Final judgment

Regional magistrate Gaynor Poulton convicted Dippenaar on six counts of murder with dolus eventualis in the Swakopmund Regional Court in August 2024.

She sentenced him to 15 years in prison on the murder counts, taken together. She also fined him N$8 000 or two years' imprisonment for reckless driving, and N$2 000 or three months' imprisonment for driving without a licence.

The trial court found that Dippenaar overtook vehicles at high speed on a blind rise near Henties Bay on 29 December 2014, causing a head-on collision.

He was driving a white Toyota FJ Cruiser. It collided with a Ford Ranger driven by Markus Joschko, a German who was on holiday in Namibia with his family.

Dippenaar's passengers, Dinah Pretorius, Charlene Schoombee and Jan Carel (JC) Horn, died. Joschko, his wife Stephanie and their daughter Alexandra were also killed. Another daughter, Antonia, was the only survivor in the Ford Ranger. Dippenaar was the only survivor in the FJ Cruiser.

In the High Court, Albert Strydom, instructed by PD Theron & Associates, represented Dippenaar. Ethel Ndlovu appeared for the State.