Oosthuizen and Another v The State

The appellants, Willem Jakobus Albertus Oosthuizen and Theo Martinus Jackson, were convicted in the High Court (functioning as the Mpumalanga Division) on charges including assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, kidnapping, and in the case of the second appellant, defeating the ends of justice. They appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal. On 2 December 2019 the SCA upheld the appeal and substituted convictions and sentences, but inadvertently antedated the sentences to an incorrect date. The present judgment concerns the correction of that patent error so that the antedating accords with the court’s true intention and section 282 of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977.

The appeal succeeded. The order of the court a quo was set aside and replaced. The convictions and sentences were confirmed as substituted, with the correction that all sentences are antedated to 27 October 2017 instead of 25 August 2017.

The case reaffirms the inherent power of appellate courts in South Africa to correct patent or clerical errors in their own orders to reflect their true intention. It confirms the application of section 282 of the Criminal Procedure Act in relation to the antedating of sentences and underscores procedural accuracy in criminal sentencing.