G4S was told in November that burnt body was not Thabo Bester's: Cameron

Inspecting judge of correctional services Edwin Cameron has told parliament that the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services told G4S in November that the burnt body found in cell 35 was not that of Thabo Bester.

This is despite G4S telling the justice and correctional services portfolio committee on Wednesday that it was only shown the postmortem results in February 2.

“G4S knew long before but were closing their eyes on it. I’m told we informed G4S about the body, about the postmortem, in November,” Cameron said.

Cameron told the committee he informed the Free State regional commissioner of prisons, Subashini Moodley, in November of Bester’s escape. He said her face went pale but it seemed she couldn’t act because of “hierarchy”.

“I know that the minister was concerned, but we wanted him and the deputy minister to activate the officials over whom they had executive authority to get things going at that point. We knew they were applying their minds. We knew that they regarded the matter as serious but we thought that the wheels were grinding too slowly,” Cameron said.

Cameron also commended the police officers who stopped Dr Nandipha Magudumana from collecting corpses in Bloemfontein in 2022.

“Constable Lekgoa, who was [stationed] at the Naval Hill police station, noticed that Dr Nandipha Magudumana had been persistently coming to collect corpses and he put a stop [to it].

“This triggered an urgent application by Dr Magudumana — not in Bloemfontein, where the deaths occurred, not where the refusal occurred — to North Gauteng High Court. A brigadier in charge of legal services in Bloemfontein got an SMS on an afternoon and she intervened and urgently contacted the state attorney in Pretoria and got a notice of opposition put in, and that answering affidavit which was lodged in August opened up matters for the department,” Cameron said.

The Sunday Times previously reported that  Magudumana allegedly stole three unidentified bodies from Free State mortuaries weeks before Bester escaped from the Mangaung Correctional Centre on May 3.

According to the report, the bodies were illegally obtained over several weeks. Two of them are believed to have been earmarked for Bester’s previous failed prison break plans from the Mangaung prison. The third body, which was ultimately used as the decoy in Bester’s successful escape on May 3 last year, has still not been identified.

Earlier on Thursday, Magudumana and Bester landed at Johannesburg’s Lanseria Airport on a chartered flight in the wee hours of the morning.

The two were arrested in Tanzania on Friday, 11 months after Bester escaped from the Mangaung prison.

Magudumana was expected to appear in the Bloemfontein High Court on Thursday morning on a charge of murder, aiding and abetting, fraud and violating bodies.

Meanwhile, Bester is being kept under 24-hour guard at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre in Pretoria.

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