'He needs to change his mindset': Thabo Bester’s mother hopes he can reform

The mother of murderer and rapist Thabo Bester, whose audacious jailbreak trial is due to resume next week, believes he has a chance to turn his life around.

“Thabo can change. He has a brain. He needs to change his mindset,” Maria Meisie Mabaso told eNCA.

During the broadcast aired on Friday, she shared she used to abuse alcohol until she came to the realisation she was killing herself. She has since built herself a fresh life and is focusing on her other children and grandchildren.

DNA testing has linked Bester with his biological mother, and a home affairs verification process showed he was born in 1986 at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

Mabaso told TimesLIVE last year Bester had grown up with her mother in Johannesburg while she was employed in the Free State as a domestic worker. She said the two women were estranged so she did not see her son.

“I wish I was there for him, specially after my mother died, because I don’t think he would have turned out like he did,” she said, recalling her dismay when she learnt he was sentenced to life imprisonment for rape and murder in two separate trials in 2011 and 2012.

Before she could get another opportunity to build a relationship with her son, Mabaso was plunged into grief when she heard he had died after allegedly taking his own life in his cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein. Her mourning period was, however, cut short when police told her they suspected the body found in Bester’s cell was not her son’s.

In an affidavit signed by police on May 25 2022, Mabaso, from Sebokeng, made a sworn statement to police that she was Bester’s biological mother and she had not given anyone permission to bury her son, saying: “I will personally bury my son and I’m going to use my preferred mortuary.”

However, Bester’s “body” was claimed by his lover Dr Nandipha Magudumana, who, through a court order granted by the Gauteng high court in Pretoria, had it ferried from Bloemfontein to a Soweto-based funeral parlour where it was allegedly cremated shortly after its arrival.

Magudumana, in an affidavit she submitted to the court on May 19 2022, argued she was Bester’s common-law wife and wanted to give her “customary husband” a “dignified burial”.

Bester escaped from the G4S-run correctional facility in an elaborate and audacious scheme which involved using a stand-in corpse on May 3 2022.

TimesLIVE