By Staff Reporter
JOHANNESBURG, April 20 — South African rapist and murderer Thabo Bester’s escape from prison and year-long undetected living with his celebrity girlfriend across borders made headlines around the world. The daring prison break, the celebrity girlfriend, and the escape across borders had all the elements of a fictional thriller. However, this tempting description serves to glamorize and trivialize the heinous crimes Bester committed.
Bester, known locally as the “Facebook rapist” for using the social media site to lure his victims, had pretended to be an agent who was going to help one of the women he attacked to find a job in television. Although he was never convicted of her rape, he was found guilty of raping and robbing two other women in 2011. A year later, he was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of his then-girlfriend, model Nomfundo Thyulu.
Bester was a cunning career criminal, a dangerous and ruthless man, with a charming, charismatic smooth-talking personality that got him what he wanted. Clinical psychologist Dr. Gerard Labuschagne, who interviewed Bester in 2011 while working at the police’s profiling department, said that even then, Bester showed indications of “impression management,” was manipulative, and never fully took responsibility for his crimes, even as he pleaded guilty.
Bester’s escape exposed a stunning level of official incompetence, leaving his victims triggered and traumatized. One of the women he attacked spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity, saying that “reading his stories in the news is bringing back a lot of triggering memories” and that her only prayer is “that he stays in jail and doesn’t get a chance to hurt any more people.”
After Bester’s escape, officials at the Mangaung Correction Centre initially reported that he had died in a fire that broke out in his isolation cell, which later turned out to be an elaborate ruse to allow Bester to escape that same night dressed in a warder’s uniform. The existence of a charred body in the cell opened the door to investigations by the police, the prisons watchdog, and the firm in charge of running the prison, British multinational security company G4S, about how this could have happened.
The autopsy report showed that the man in the cell had died from blunt force trauma to the head, not in the fire, indicating that a dead body had been placed in the cell before the fire. It turned out that Bester had conned his way into the isolation cell, located near a fire escape and in an area of the prison where CCTV coverage was not the best. He allegedly greased a few palms, from warders to camera operators, and bought his way out of prison.
With no one really looking for him for nearly a year, Bester appeared to be living it up under a new name in the millionaire Johannesburg suburb of Hyde Park with his celebrity girlfriend, Dr. Nandipha Magudumana. However, investigations by the South African news agency GroundUp led to the first article on the story, complete with photos that included a man who bore a striking resemblance to Bester, out grocery shopping with Dr. Magudumana and her children.
Bester’s escape and year-long undetected living were anything but glamorous for his victims. The story highlights the importance of authorities taking responsibility and being accountable for their failures in keeping dangerous criminals like Bester behind bars. – Namibia Daily News
