Durban tenderpreneur Govender brothers deny murder charges

14 Jan 2025

Brothers Ferrel and Darren Govender, charged with the December murder of businessman Shailen Singh, appeared for a bail application in the Durban Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.

Businessmen Ferrel and Darren Govender were the picture of calm in the Durban Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, 14 January when they applied for bail and denied the murder charges against them.

The thick-set brothers, the elder with a shiny dome and the younger with a crew cut, wore smart jackets and designer glasses.

They sat in the dock, relaxed. Behind them, the court was packed with supporters, wearing T-shirts with slogans protesting their innocence.

In front of them, three of Durban’s most experienced lawyers used impressive legalese before magistrate Kevin Bruorton.

The men are represented by attorneys Ravindra Maniklall and Carl van der Merwe, and advocate Christo van Schalkwyk.

The brothers are accused of murdering businessman Shailen Singh.

Gunmen pumped 19 rounds into Singh while he was in the driver’s seat of his car behind a popular Umhlanga restaurant at about 11.30am on Sunday, 29 December.

Singh, the owner of a transport company and husband and father to a two-month-old child, died at the scene, off Meridian Drive.

The sensational case has been the talk of Durban since the Govenders handed themselves over to police on New Year’s Day.

The brothers are high-profile businessmen with government contracts.

Charges denied

Their lawyers said they would deny murder charges. They painted a picture of wealthy men worth hundreds of millions of rands – family men who employed more than 3,000 people and were known to the police because of their security company, Pro Secure.

They were not a flight risk, the lawyers argued.

Ferrel had multiple businesses, earned millions of rands and paid a wage bill of R180-million at Pro Secure alone last year.

Ferrel’s lawyers said the security business was competitive, and nobody could manage the firm with its 8,000 customers as well as his client could. He had more than R400 million in assets, no pending criminal cases and no previous convictions. He surrendered his passport in court.

Ferrel once worked as a Durban Metro policeman for 18 months.

He handed himself over to police when asked to do so, was not a flight risk and wouldn’t interfere with the course of justice. He was innocent of murder and confident he would be acquitted.

He and his brother never planned to murder Singh or anyone else, the lawyers submitted.

A single eyewitness to the shooting did not identify him as being present.

Darren was a Pro Secure co-director, earning more than R100,000 a month and had assets worth more than R10-million.

Like his brother, he denied shooting Singh and intended to clear his name of charges that had done them irreparable harm.

Darren has a 2016 conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol, for which he received a non-custodial sentence.

The brothers’ lawyers said the seizure of their cellphones after their arrest would form the basis of a Constitutional Court challenge.

The State applied for the bail hearing to be postponed until Friday because prosecutors (Seema Reddy and Nkululeko Msiya) had not had time to study the investigating officer’s affidavit, prompting protracted legal argument.

Prosecutors said they would introduce audio evidence relating to domestic violence to rebut claims that one of the brothers was eligible for bail.

The defence team demanded details of the evidence, and the magistrate ordered the bail hearing to proceed tomorrow. DM

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Charges denied