By Anita Dangazele
- Thabo Bester faked his death in a Mangaung prison fire and spent nearly a year living freely in Johannesburg.
- Dr Nandipha Magudumana, Bester’s partner and co-accused, allegedly sourced a corpse from a mortuary to help him escape.
Thabo Bester is going back to court.
The convicted murderer and rapist, known as the Facebook Rapist, appears in the Free State High Court in Bloemfontein on Friday for case management proceedings. The main trial is set to begin on 20 July.
It has taken three years to get here.
Bester escaped from the Mangaung Correctional Centre in May 2022 in one of the most elaborate prison breaks South Africa has ever seen. A charred body was placed in his cell to make it look like he had died in a fire. Investigators later found the man had been killed by a blow to the head before being set alight. Bester walked out dressed as a prison warden. Surveillance cameras had been switched off.
His partner, aesthetics doctor Nandipha Magudumana, is accused of sourcing the body from a government mortuary, using an employee to collect it under false pretences. Her father, Zolile Sekeleni, is accused of hiring the vehicle used to transport it.
After the escape, Bester lived under the alias TK Nkwana. He and Magudumana rented a luxury mansion in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, drove expensive cars and ran fraudulent property businesses. They were caught after investigative outlet GroundUp published DNA evidence in March 2023 proving the body in the cell was not Bester.
The couple fled across several borders.
On 8 April 2023, authorities arrested them in Arusha, Tanzania, close to the Kenyan border. They were found with multiple fake passports and deported back to South Africa.
Bester is held at Kgosi Mampuru II Central Correctional Centre in Pretoria. Magudumana remains at the Bizzah Makhate Correctional Centre in Kroonstad. More than nine co-accused face charges including murder, arson, fraud and violating a corpse.
The trial has been delayed repeatedly by Bester changing legal teams and both accused challenging the legality of their arrest and extradition.
Pictured above: Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha Magudumana appear in the Free State High Court in Bloemfontein on Friday ahead of their main trial, set to begin on 20 July.
Image source: File
