The Western Cape High Court judge found him guilty of murdering his wife at a wine estate, and had refused him leave to appeal, refused his application for bail, and Salie-Hlophe refused to recuse herself from his bail extension application.

He lost his appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal for his wife Susan's murder, and although he had his sentence reduced to 15 years, from 20, he was supposed to have started serving his sentence last month.

Now he wants to appeal to the Constitutional Court, and his lawyers put in an urgent application for his bail to be extended pending this new development. 

In the meantime, he needed his bail extended so that he could wait out the appeal outside jail.

His lawyers rushed to the Western Cape High Court to have his bail extended pending the Constitutional Court application, and to their dismay, found that Salie-Hlophe had to hear the application because she had been Rohde's trial judge.

Rohde and Salie-Hlophe had been in a long-running tussle over his applications for leave to appeal, and when he tried to have her recused, she said he was forum shopping. 

He had argued that he had a reasonable apprehension that she might be biased against him; that she wrote her judgment too quickly; and that she treated him shabbily by summoning him from hospital when he did not arrive at court.

In dismissing his recusal application, she set down 11 November for his bail application to be heard, stating clearly that if he did not apply for bail on that date, he should start serving his sentence. 

Rohde insisted that Susan killed herself with a styling iron cord after a night of fighting over his relationship with estate agent Jolene Alterskye.

He had assured her it was over, but it appeared not to be the case when they were at the Spier conference for estate agents. 

News24