EDITORIAL | Thabo Bester’s freedom is a middle finger to our justice system

That a convicted rapist and murderer who scammed several businesses into parting with hundreds of thousands of rand while in a maximum security facility and is now celebrating his freedom after an audacious escape is, frankly, sickening. 

Thabo Bester, nicknamed the “Facebook Rapist” for his modus operandi in luring his young victims, is easily the poster child for the duplicity, greed and malfeasance festering in our society which enabled him and his co-conspirators to cock a snoot at our justice system. 

It was independent news agency GroundUp’s expose that showed Bester, who was serving a life sentence for murder, hadn’t succumbed in a fiery suicide but was running a multimillion-rand businesses from his prison cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein. 

That he posed as chairperson “Tom Motsepe” of a media company, which claimed to be a subsidiary of American media giant 21st Century Fox and a video capturing a smartly dressed “Tom” laughing hysterically — supposedly via a live link from New York — as guests at the launch of the sham company sing happy birthday to him.

That a prison warden sent an email to justice and correctional services minister Ronald Lamola a month after Bester’s fake death at the Mangaung facility on May 3 2022, alerting him that someone innocent was burnt beyond recognition in cell 35 — where Bester had been moved days before.

Then a Sunday Times investigation uncovered two other shocking twists — first, a case of stolen identity in which convicted murderer Thabo Bester from Ratanda believed a person, pretending to be him and using his identity number, had committed robberies while he was in prison for which he later arrested. The Facebook Rapist has family in Ratanda.

Second, after faking his death Bester was living the high life in a mansion in Hyde Park, frequenting the local mall without as much as an investigation until reports of his notorious escape led to him having to abandon the property, shortly before correctional services officials and police visited the house. It was only on Saturday that the correctional services department (DCS) confirmed his escape. 

According to the DCS annual report, there were 22 prison escapes during the 2021/22 financial year — a dramatic decrease from 117 in the previous period — for which the authority patted itself on the back, saying it was the lowest in 27 years. 

But in this case, the facility is a private-public partnership managed by Bloemfontein Correctional Contracts (BCC) of which G4S, the largest security services provider in the world with operations in about 100 countries in six continents, is a shareholder. 

For Bester to have conducted his business from his prison cell and hatched an elaborate escape under their watch is an indictment on the state of affairs at the second largest private prison in the world. 

Operations at the facility came under the spotlight in 2013 when G4S received reports of alleged mistreatment of prisoners and proposed a retired judge carry out an independent investigation.

After reviewing the allegations, an investigation concluded there was no evidence to support the allegations.   

One thing is clear, Bester’s escape was clearly not the work of one man.

As in the case of the country’s then most notorious inmate, Mozambican-born Ananias Mathe, who was convicted of rape, murder and house robbery and escaped from prison in 2006 with the help, it later turned out, of six warders.

Similarly, it doesn’t take a genius to work out the assistance needed for the transgressions of protocol in Bester’s escape: 

• A plan was hatched and several warders had to be brought on board to execute the plan
• Palms were greased to set the elements of the plan in motion
• Someone had to find a body — a corpse, in which case morgue officials or a funeral home was involved, or some “faceless” John Doe was possibly murdered
• The body was transported into the prison by someone;
• A warder moved Bester out of cell 35 to an undisclosed location while the body was put into the cell
• Someone started the fire and controlled it so that it didn’t spread to the rest of the block
• Someone with clearance — either a service provider or prison official — transported Bester to freedom

Based on evidence, a number of people, from other prisoners to warders, knew about the fire and the prison swap without doing anything to stop it.

This allowed Bester to continue his fraudulent lifestyle with his life-partner and aesthetics doctor Nandipha Magudumana.

It took a lone prison official to report the matter twice and still nothing was done about it — until it was leaked to the media. 

Lamola’s response to the tip-off email was derisive laughter and a shambolic justification of not providing “running commentary” on an ongoing investigation.

Their counterparts, the police, are appealing for patience while they build a “watertight case” and also catch the individual responsible for leaking “sensitive and confidential” information to the media.

Reactions to this outrageous cover-up have rightly been one of condemnation.

As Build One Nation leader Mmusi Maimane summed up: “The killers of Kiernan Jarryd Forbes (AKA) are still on the loose. The killers of Cloete Murray and Thomas Murray are still on the loose. Thabo Bester is on the loose, a convicted rapist and murderer. We are living in a Nkabi nation under this administration, the tally against injustice and lawlessness is overwhelming and depressing.”

Bester makes a mockery of our justice system.

It is imperative for police and the DCS to ensure heads roll for the sake of his victims and for the dignity of the rule of law. 

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