Dr Nandipha's case postponed to allow home affairs to file opposing papers

Nandipha Magudumana's urgent application to the high court in Bloemfontein, which seeks to declare her arrest and detention wrongful and unlawful, has been postponed to June 1 to allow the department of home affairs time to file opposing papers. 

The celebrity skincare and aesthetics doctor has hauled the Free State director of public prosecutions, the minister of police, police officer Capt Tieho Flyman, the presiding magistrate for the criminal case and the head of the Bizzah Makhate Correctional Centre before court, arguing she is illegally detained as police “abducted her” in Tanzania. 

The parties appeared briefly in court on Friday but the matter was postponed to next week. 

Magudumana was arrested in April in Tanzania with her boyfriend Thabo Bester, a convicted rapist and murderer who escaped from prison. She has been in custody since. 

In her court papers she says police had no court order with them that warranted her transportation from Tanzania to South Africa and no warrant for her arrest was issued. 

She wants the court to nullify and set aside the criminal proceedings before the Bloemfontein magistrate's court. She also wants the court to declare she is entitled to be released from prison.

Minister of home affairs Aaron Motsoaledi on Monday said his department wanted to join proceedings as an interested party. 

He told a news conference Magudumana was not unlawfully “abducted” or “extradited” from Tanzania.

“Dr Nandipha Magudumana and Thabo Bester were declared prohibited immigrants in terms of the immigration laws of Tanzania and were therefore, as a matter of law, liable to be deported to their country of origin. The same procedure was followed in respect of the Mozambican who was in their company,” Motsoaledi said.

The department wants to join the proceedings as respondents, as they were part of the process to bring back Magudumana and Bester to South Africa. 

In brief proceedings, the parties agreed for home affairs to join the case and be cited as respondents. They also agreed for the matter to be postponed to June 1. 

The department is to file opposing papers by Monday and Magudumana's team is to file their replying affidavit by Tuesday. All parties are to file their heads of argument by close of business on Wednesday and the matter has been set down for hearing on Thursday.

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