IN THE HIGH COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA
(WESTERN CAPE DIVISION, CAPE TOWN)
JUDGMENT
Case no: A49/2026
In the matter between:
KEAGAN CARL TROSKIE APPELLANT
AND
THE STATE
RESPONDENT
Coram: Justice J Cloete et Acting Justice M Adams
Heard: 28 August 2026
Delivered (electronically): 31 August 2026
ORDER
The appellant’s appeal against his convictions on counts 1 and 2 is dismissed.
The convictions and resultant sentence are confirmed.
JUDGMENT
Cloete J (Adams AJ concurring):
[1] This is an appeal with leave of the trial court against the appellant’s
conviction on 19 June 2024 on two counts of assault with intent to cause
grievous bodily harm .1 The counts were taken as one for purposes of sentence
and he received 4 years direct imprisonment under s 276(1)( i) of the Criminal
Procedure Act .2 Leave to appeal against conviction was granted by the trial
court.
[2] The st ate’s case was that on 25 October 2020 the complainant was
severely assaulted on two occasions, which included punching and striking her
over her body, cho king her, headbutting her on her nose, covering her mouth,
biting her and threatening to kill her. The state also alleged that the assaults
were committed by the appellant, the complainant’s boyfriend at the time, in her
home in the early hours and later the same morning.
[3] The complainant’ evidence was that the aforementioned assaults occurred
after she withdrew from consensual sexual intercourse with the appellant after
he had subjected her to rough, painful intercourse after a night out together.
During the first assault, he dragged her back onto the bed and continued , while
also swearing at her and calling her a bitch and a whore amongst others.
Thereafter he forced her to lie next to him.
1 The appellant was charged with two counts of attempted murder but found guilty of two counts of assault with
intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He was acquitted on a third count of kidnapping.
2 Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977. Section 276(1)(i) permits an offender’s earlier release under correctional
supervision, in the discretion of the Correctional Supervision and Parole Review Board, on expiry of one -sixth
of the sentence.
[4] At a round 6 am th at morning he again viciously assaulted her . After
calming and cajoling him, she managed to leave her home under the pretence of
going for a walk. She ran to a friend who lived about 2 km away. The friend
took photographs of her injuries on the complainant’s cell phone and took her to
the police station to report the incident. Thereafter she was taken for a medi cal
examination.
[5] After the complainant left her home that morning the appellant
repeatedly called and messaged her on WhatsApp . Proof of the calls made , and
messages from his cell phone, were handed in as Exhibit B. She answered one
of these calls and her told her that he loved her and that she should not do
anything stupid, which she understood to mean reporting the matter to the
police.
[6] After being medically examined, she returned to the police station. The
appellant had already been contacted by them to come to the station. Upon his
arrival he asked her to withdraw the charge and she refused. On the following
day she obtained a protection order against the appellant and changed the locks
to her home.
[7] Although the complainant was subjected to lengthy cross -examination
she remained unshaken on all material aspects of her testimony. The appellant’s
version was essentially that the complainant had concocted the assault s to
punish him as a result of jealousy , and had in fact thrown a glass at him which
injured his rib. She was consistent in her denial of that version.
[8] The appellant also maintained, as part of his version, that the complainant
deliberately photoshopped the photographs of her inju ries, and sent herself a t
least one message incriminating him from one of his two cell phones.
According to him, he had asked her to keep that phone in her handbag while
they were out at dinner the night before. The complainant’s response was that
she had only ‘photoshopped’ out some of her private parts for sake of decency ,
and that the appellant had only one cell phone , although he used two sim cards.
She denied that he had asked her to keep his cell phone as he alleged.
[9] It was thereafter put to her by the appellant’s legal representative that he
could not have made the calls, and sent the messages to her , that particular
morning, because he had already had to hand in his phone to the police . The
record is not clear as to the identity of the phone to which the appellant’s legal
representative was referring . As far as can be gleaned from the record, the
complainant’s testimony about the two sim cards was not taken further in cross -
examination.
[10] Dr Swart s had conducted the medical examination of the complainant.
She confirmed the compla inant’s injuries. She also confirmed that the
complainant asked her to take photographs of her injuries on the complainant’s
cell phone, which she did, and identified them as part of Exhibit A. Dr Swarts
was cross-examined but again, on the material aspects of her evidence, she was
also unshaken.
[11] The appellant’s friend who had assisted her testified and corroborated her
version in all material respects, including the complainant’s injuries, that she
too had photographed them, how traumatised the complainant was, and the
appellant’s persistent messaging and calling. A further witness, who lived close
by to the complainant but did not know her, testified that she was woken on the
night in question by a female screaming and crying, which continued on and off
for a few hours. The noise was coming from the direction of the com plainant’s
home some 12 metres away. About two weeks later the complainant came to her
home to inform her that she was the person who had been assaulted. The
complainant also lifted her top to show her some bruising.
[12] In his testimony the appellant repeated his version that the complainant
was jealous and had assaulted him by throwing a glass at him. He flatly denied
having assaulted her or having tried to contact her or attempted to persuade her
to withdraw the charge s. He continued to maintain, in essence, that she had
made up the entire episode. He did not mention during his evidence in chief that
he had asked the complainant to keep one of his cell phones in her bag the night
before the incident. Indeed he made no mention of how many phones or sim
cards he had.
[13] According to him, when the complainant left her home the morning after
the alleged assaults she had no injuries whatsoever , was calm, and kissed him
goodbye. He was thus very surprised to receive a call from the police later that
morning while he was visiting his sister. He testified that he ha nded his phone,
watch, keys and wallet to his sister (who had accompanied him to the station)
when he was taken to be fingerprinted.
[14] He alleged that the complainant called him on his phone while his sister
was holding it , and told him: ‘I did not mean to do this . I just thought that you
were going to do it’ presumably - although this was not properly explored -
because she thought that he would report her alleged assault on him with the
glass. His evidence was that both Sergeant Williams, the police officer present
at the time, as well as his sister would confirm this. However, Sergeant
Williams was not called by the defence as a witness.
[15] In cross-examination the appellant conceded that he had neither formally
reported nor sought medical attention for the injury he maintained the
complainant had inflicted to his rib when she allegedly threw the glass at him ,
despite describing it as causing him ‘immense pain’. He conceded that he is
considerably stronger and larger than the compla inant. When asked if he agreed
that in a physical altercation he could easily have overpowered her, he replied
that in a physical altercation he could easily have overpowered her, he replied
that: ‘I would not know because you cannot underestimate someone by the size
of them’. This was but one example of the appellant’s economy with the truth,
as is more fully borne out by the record. He also conceded that after his arrest
he had never heard from the complainant again.
[16] According to the appellant, the complainant left her home at 8 am and he
left to visit his sister at 10.30 am. The records in Exhibit B reflect 27 messages
sent from the appellant’s phone number to the compla inant between 8.05 am
and 9.04 am that morning, mostly begging her to respond and also asking her
forgiveness. They continue d from 11.17 am to 13.22 pm . In two, he asked
which hospital she had gone to. At 11.57 am his message read that the police
had contacted him and at 11.58 am he messaged ‘Please …withdraw it’. At
12.08 pm his message read that he was leaving with his sister for the police
station. The messages continued constantly until 13.23 pm until the complainant
blocked him. Notwithstanding this overwhelming objective evidence , the
appellant maintained that he did not once attempt to contact the complainant
during that entire period.
[17] The appellant appeared to have forgotten his version about the
complainant having one of his cell phones, because he then claimed that he had
left the other in the bedside cabinet at the complainant’s home. He also
confirmed that when the complainant left that morning, the phone he alleged
she had messaged herself from to incriminate him was still in the cabinet, and
he did not suggest that she had returned at any stage to retrieve it.
[18] He claimed for the first time that the woman of whom the complainant
was allegedly jealous had a physical altercation with her two weeks prior to the
events giving rise to the charges , but did not know why this had never been put
to the complainant when she testified , although he had allegedly told his legal
representative about it when preparing for trial.
[19] The evidence of the appellant’s sister, who drove him to the police station
after the complainant reported the incidents, could not assist him with regard to
the assaults themselves. Although she testified that the complainant had called
the appellant on his phone while he was being fingerprinted, she maintained that
the phone was lying on a table and she was not holding it as the appellant
alleged. It is unclear how the appellant grabbed the phone – as she put it- in the
presence of Sergeant Williams while he was being fingerprinted.
[20] The learned magistrate correctly summarised the evidence , albeit briefly.
Her evaluation thereof, together with her credibility findings, cannot be faulted.
She implicitly accepted that there were some inconsistencies in the evidence
adduced by the state. These inconsistencies, which were not material, are
unsurprising given the extent of the assaults on the complainant and how
traumatised she was as a result when making the initial reports. The
complainant was also, as the magistrate correctly observed, subjected to
unnecessarily lengthy and at times irrelevant cross-examination.
[21] As the magistrate also observed, there were no inherent improbabilities
in the complainant’s version , and that version was corroborated in all material
respects by three witnesses, two of whom (Dr Swarts and the neighbour) were
entirely independent witnesses. The magistrate was also correct in rejecting the
appellant’s version as false beyond reasonable dou bt and placing little weight
on the veracity of his sister’s testimony.
[22] The grounds of appeal advanced on the appellant’s behalf are essentially
twofold. The first is the criticism that the state failed to prove its case beyond a
reasonable doubt, with reliance being placed on aspects which are not material .
None have merit. The second pertains to the alleged fabrication by the
complainant of the photographic and electronic evidence which the trial court,
complainant of the photographic and electronic evidence which the trial court,
in granting leave to appeal, appears to have regarded as a ‘contentious issue’.
[23] In my view, if anything, the learned magistrate erred on the side of
caution on this score. It is highly improbable, give n the proven facts, that the
complainant would have somehow managed to injure herself between leaving
her home (on the appellant’s version, without a scratch) and arriving at her
friend’s home a short while later, bleeding, bruised and traumatised . The friend
took the first set of photographs and confirmed the complainant’s physical and
emotional condition. The same friend accompanied the complainant to the
police station and thereafter to her medical examination . Dr Swarts herself took
photographs of the complainant’s injuries and she too confirmed them . There
was no suggestion that either of these two witnesses had been party to
photoshopping those photographs.
[24] As far as the calls and messages to the complainant are concerned, the
defence did not adduce the evidence of an expert , and the complainant’s friend
confirmed that the complainant received them. The messages were also clearly
corroborated by Exhibit B.
[25] Having regard to the above, the appellant was correctly convicted and the
appeal thus fails. Although we are precluded from interfering with sentence
(which can only occur where there is a cross-appeal by the state – which there is
not - and then on grounds curtailed by law) , in the particular circumstances of
this case, one of serious gender-based violence against a defenceless woman in
the sanctity of her home , by someone she trusted and who is entirely without
remorse, the appellant has been given a proverbial slap on the wrist in receiving
the lenient sentence that he did.
[26] The following order is made:
The appellant’s appeal against his convictions on counts 1 and 2 is
dismissed. The convictions and resultant sentence are confirmed.
_____________________________
J I CLOETE
JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT
I agree
_____________________________
M ADAMS
ACTING JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT
Appearances
For appellant: L van Reenen
Instructed by: Le Minnie Attorneys, Malmesbury
For respondent: L Badenhorst
Instructed by: Director of Public Prosecutions, Cape Town