Pretoria - As South Africans woke up on Thursday morning to digest the news of the highly-anticipated landing of fugitives Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha Magudumana from Tanzania, it soon emerged that Bester had been confined to the fortified Kgosi Mampuru II correctional centre, also referred to as C-Max in Pretoria.
Magudumana was quickly whisked off to Bloemfontein, under heavy police security, where she was processed and charged with murder and aiding Bester’s escape.
However, given Bester’s illustrious escape from the Mangaung Correctional Centre run by multinational security company G4S, questions quickly swelled over government’s ability to keep the convicted rapist and murderer behind bars at the facility on the outskirts of Pretoria CBD.
At a press briefing in Cape Town on Thursday morning, hours after Bester and Magudumana arrived back in South Africa, national commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale sought to allay fears of Bester vanishing from the Pretoria prison, a feat achieved by Mozambican serial rapist and escapee artist Ananias Mathe.
Now deceased, Mathe was dubbed the “Houdini of C-Max” after his daring escape from the Pretoria correctional stronghold in 2006. In 2013, Mathe, who was then housed at Ebongweni C-Max facility in KwaZulu-Natal, used a hammer and chisel to break through the wall of his maximum-security cell on the third floor. His attempt in KZN was thwarted, but his Pretoria escape record remains untainted.
Fearing another embarrassing escape by Mathe, and after the guilty verdict was delivered, the notorious rapist was flown under heavy guard to Kokstad’s C-Max Prison.
On Thursday, Thobakale insisted although he would not publicly outline the security plan around Bester, the convicted rapist and murderer would not pull an Ananias Mathe.
“I will not respond to the question about modes of transport and the security plan around transporting the offender to court or any other place. There has not been an escape from C-Max in the past five years. The Ananias Mathe incident happened before we upgraded our security,” said Thobakale.
“There are items that we do not allow offenders access to when they are in the cells or the facility, and one of them is obviously the belt that you (journalists) referred to. Those are identified as harmful items, and we do not allow them to have those items.
“I must indicate that these are the types of offenders that are always on watch, on the clock, because we know the type of security environment that we are managing as the Department of Correctional Services,” he said.
Mathe was sentenced to 54 years in prison in 2009 after being convicted of a range of crimes, including rape, attempted murder, fraud and armed robbery, after two successful escapes from high-security facilities while awaiting trial.
In 2016, Mathe died at the King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban after suffering complications from a “digestive issue”.
Moments after Bester was incarcerated at Kgosi Mampuru, the Economic Freedom Fighters joined several Twitter users calling for the inmate to be moved to Kokstad.
EFF leader Julius Malema wrote: “He must go to Kokstad prison. Kgoši Mampuru can't be trusted at all. MXM”.
He must go to Kokstad prison; kgoši Mampuru can't be trusted at all. MXM
— Julius Sello Malema (@Julius_S_Malema) April 13, 2023
Kokstad was one of the top Twitter trends on Thursday afternoon. There were almost 900 retweets to Malema’s tweet before midday.
Another Twitter user, The Iron Duke, wrote: “Kgosi Mampuru prison will be like a holiday for Thabo Bester. He needs to be taken taken to Ebongweni Prison in Kokstad, KZN. That's the only prison even the notorious Ananias Mathe couldn't escape”.
Kgosi Mampuru prison will be like a holiday for Thabo Bester. He needs to be taken taken to Ebongweni Prison in Kokstad, KZN. That's the only prison even the notorious Ananias Mathe couldn't escape. pic.twitter.com/d60n2tKhfN
— The Iron Duke (@ThembaENgcobo1) April 13, 2023
Another user, @azuk1le, weighed in: “Pray for Thabo Bester. They will probably take him to eBongweni in Kokstad. And when he gets there, he is going to pray everyday that his death wasn't fake but real!”
Pray for Thabo Bester. They will probably take him to eBongweni in Kokstad. And when he gets there, He is going to pray everyday that his death wasn't fake but real! pic.twitter.com/fKVzsbv3gJ
In 2012, the Department of Correctional Services launched an investigation after serial escapee Zimbabwean national Bongani Moyo and his accomplices Khumbulani Sibanda and Leon Ncube were re-arrested after they breached the C-Max Prison in Pretoria.
The three left the highly secured prison facility, but their dash for freedom was foiled when a newspaper vendor on the street saw them and raised the alarm.
They allegedly used prison overalls to scale a perimeter wall after escaping from the double-storey prison building.
Before that foiled attempt to escape from C-Max in Pretoria, Moyo had previously vanished from legal custody several times in South Africa.
In August 2012, Moyo got up and left the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court after being made to sit on a bench outside the courtroom where he was appearing. He was on crutches at the time, and he vanished.
On the day, Moyo was appearing in court with three others on charges including armed robbery, possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, and resisting arrest.
It also emerged that before that escape, Moyo had recently been sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for escaping from the Johannesburg police station.
In March 2011, Moyo escaped from Boksburg Prison. He was then arrested near the Beitbridge border post in Limpopo while he was coming back to South Africa from Zimbabwe to seek medical treatment.
IOL