The Presidency has called fugitive Thabo Bester’s escape “embarrassing”, but it noted that steps have been taken to re-arrest the convicted murderer and serial rapist.
After faking his death and escaping from a privately run state prison in Mangaung in May 2022, Bester and his lover, Dr Nandipha Magudumana, fled the country unnoticed.
On Friday last week, while crossing the border from Tanzania to Kenya, the lovebirds were arrested together with a Mozambican national accompanying them.
Vincent Magwenya, spokesperson for President Cyril Ramaphosa, said on Wednesday that the head of state is closely watching the situation.
Mgwenya said Ramaphosa “feels that indeed, this is an occurrence or incident that should not have happened”.
“It should not have been allowed to happen. It does talk to some weaknesses within the system, and those weaknesses are being attended to, embarrassing as it is,” said Magwenya.
However, said Magwenya: “What is encouraging is that we still have a system that is robust enough to respond rapidly to such cases.”
He said Bester’s re-arrest confirmed that “we have a system that can deliver results fairly quickly”.
“As we’ve witnessed with the arrests that have been made, there will be accountability because investigations are ongoing, and those investigations will result in more arrests and will result in people being held accountable.”
He said Ramaphosa is disturbed that such an incident happened but encouraged that the law-enforcement agencies could “rapidly respond to such cases”.
“And we do have to, on an ongoing basis, clean up our system. It also talks to the work that is currently under way in terms of rebuilding the capability of the state at all levels and ensuring that we clean out these corrupt elements within our law enforcement.”
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