THESE CRIMINAL CASES THAT HAVE CAUSED AFRICA (1/5) –In January 2023, Johannesburg is upside down. Just a few days apart, two tigers escaped from their enclosure. A man crossed paths with a woman and was attacked. We are using important means to track these wild animals and get them out of danger. At the same time, another predator is waiting in the South African metropolis: Thabo Bester. But no one is tracking him.
Why panic? Officially, the man died in a fire in his cell. Convicted of murder, rape and robbery when he was just 23 years old, this father of three children from three different women represented a public danger. Sentenced to life in prison in 2012, he was placed in solitary confinement in Mangaung Prison, in Bloemfontein, located in central South Africa.
Predator
On Facebook, Thabo Bester arrested women to whom he promised a modeling career. Under a false identity (he used at least thirteen pseudonyms), he posed as intermediaries working on behalf of international recruiters. After deceiving the models and starting an affair with them, he raped him and then robbed him at knifepoint.
In September 2011, Thabo Bester killed 26-year-old Nomfundo Tyhulu, whom he met on a BMW expedition. The lovers are sleeping in a hotel in Cape Town when, in the middle of the night, Bester runs into the kitchen and grabs a knife with the intention of stealing the young man's computer and phone. But she wakes up and a fight breaks out. Thabo Bester stabs one. As Nomfundo Tyhulu, wounded in the chest, bleeds, his executioner demands a computer password.
If I wanted to kill her, I would have done it. I am not stupid
Although he pleaded guilty during his trial in 2011, he denied any premeditation. “If I wanted to kill her, I would have done it. I am not stupid. I would have done it in a way that the police would never find me,” if he defends it with some pride in front of the specialist psychiatrist, who films the exchange. Better is smart and knows it. Committing the perfect crime, deceiving the police... A decade later, Thabo Bester will be successful.
It was at 3 am on May 3, 2022, when a fire broke out in cell No. 35 of the Mangaung penitentiary center. This is the prison where “the Facebook rapist” sleeps. At 5:10 am, the resident, found charred under the mattress, was pronounced dead. The body is unrecognizable, but the news spreads like wildfire: Thabo Bester is dead. His notoriety is such that the announcement of his disappearance made headlines without anyone thinking of expressing the slightest regret or the slightest doubt.
Undead
Thabo Bester, on April 14, 2023 before the judges in Bloemfontein. © Frikkie Kapp/Gallo Images via Getty Images
We have never seen a man rise from the ashes. And yet, the individual waiting in line at the grocery store on June 30, 2022 looks exactly like Thabo Bester. It's difficult to be sure, because the suspect hides his gaze behind thick sunglasses. Dressed in a camouflage-colored khaki hooded sweatshirt, the man tries to go unnoticed. But he resembles a star running from the paparazzi more than a fugitive on the run. In her shopping cart, a Louis Vuitton bag, from which bags of snack cakes escape.
A few months later, the investigative website Ground Up was cautiously discovered. “Man resembling Thabo Bester seen in Sandton [quartier chic du nord de Johannesburg]”, is the headline from March 2023. Its journalists doubt the criminal's death. In November 2022, they published a first article about “the many mysteries surrounding the death of the Facebook rapist. » They investigated tirelessly and, despite the lack of cooperation from the police, untangled the threads of this story, one by one.
Your partner is a celebrity
If the man in the supermarket is not immediately recognizable, his companion is easily identifiable. The woman in cream joggers and braids tied into a bun is the same celebrity: Nandipha Magudumana, a cosmetic doctor specializing in heat treatments. With 150,000 subscribers on Instagram, portraits in the press and appearances on television, she attracts attention. But the researcher got to know the other side of the influencer: it was she who asked for the charred body after the fire in cell no. 35 in Mangaung. At the morgue, she was introduced as the victim's wife.
It's more than a couple, it's an association of criminals
The duo is not married but Nandipha Magudumana and Thabo Bester are dating. They met at university before, she says, losing contact. The man may be in prison based on the facts we know, but that in no way dissuaded Nandipha from getting back in touch, visiting him in 2017 and sending him money. A couple forms despite the distance, rare meetings in the living room and a criminal record that prefers celibacy. The two lovebirds have a love of dirty money in common. It's more than a couple, it's a criminal association.
Because prison doesn't stop business. Nandipha and Thabo start fraudulent businesses in real estate or media. Large-scale scams such as the “Women in Media” conference organized by 21st Century Media, a fake company imitating American entertainment giant 21st Century Fox. In this case, Nandipha's role remains to be determined, but Thabo's is beyond doubt. He introduces himself as one Tom Motsepe, director of 21st Century Media. For all South Africans, this nickname evokes that of Patrice Motsepe, president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and, in addition, one of the richest men on the continent.
On the day of the conference, it was announced that “the boss” would speak duplex from his offices in New York. Thabo Bester appears on screen, wearing a jacket and tie over an immaculate shirt. It's 2018 and the rapist lives in the shadows, in Mangaung prison. The white wall he leans against is that of his cell. Arms crossed, he bursts into laughter as the assembly – the Johannesburg elite – chants “Happy birthday, dear Tom.” Proud of his effect, he has yet to invent his biggest lie.
A corpse in the closet
Dr Nandipha Magudumana during the trial of Thabo Bester on 17 April 2023 in Bloemfontein. © Frikkie Kapp/Gallo Images via Getty Images
A body is recovered from the Bloemfontein mortuary by an individual who passed off as a relative of the deceased. On April 29, 2022, the remains were hidden in a TV cabinet, which was then loaded into a car bound for Mangaung Prison. The vehicle enters the premises without being searched. The furniture is then stored in a prison warehouse. The body is transferred to a large trash can, taken to cell number 35. Sprayed with oil to facilitate ignition, the bait is placed in the cell, while Thabo Bester escapes, disguised as a prison guard.
The warden had lost control of the prison
None of this was filmed. To achieve their goals, South Africans Bonnie & Clyde took care to bribe a whole gallery of characters. The technician responsible for maintaining the cameras, the doorman, a guard bought to close his eyes... One of the guards, an inspector, received 7,500 euros. A total of twelve people are being prosecuted in the escape case, including at least seven former employees of Mangaung, the second largest private prison in the world, run by British multinational G4S. The director “had lost control”, admitted the National Commissioner for Prison Administration.
What the police didn't see, they could have read in the autopsy report. Neither the size of the corpse nor the DNA matched Thabo Bester. The death occurred prior to the fire and the cause of death was not asphyxiation. The prison administration denied having the autopsy report, although it was available the day after the fire and Ground Up journalists were able to obtain it quite easily. The victim was thirty-year-old Katlego Bereng – whose victims of death remained unknown. This father of two, a fan of a former local football club, had been missing for a year. According to the first elements of the investigation, Katlego was a friend of one of the prison officers involved in the escape, with whom he met in a bar.
In this failed environment of the South African police and judicial system, where corruption reigns supreme, anonymous people have resisted the inertia of the administration. Whistleblowers, including a former judge and a police officer, mobilized to provide evidence to Ground Up journalists. It was thanks to them that the authorities finally recognized, on March 25, 2023, that the body found in this cell was not the by Thabo Bester. The next day, they were after the fugitive.
Arrested in Tanzania
When police raided a villa in Johannesburg's upscale Hyde Park, they had to admit they would be a little late. The coup plotters, who lived just a stone's throw from the residence of the President, Cyril Ram Aphosa, had fled. Thabo Bester and Nandipha Magudumana were eventually arrested with the help of Interpol on April 12, near Arusha, Tanzania, when they were probably taken to Kenya. They had several passports with different identities. Quickly exfiltrated to South Africa, they ended up in two different prisons.
Thabo Bester is now defining the maximum security section of a Pretoria prison. A term that no longer impresses anyone in South Africa, where bank notes open the doors of a penitentiary more easily than a saw. It was from this same prison that in 2006 the series rapist Ananias Mathe was embellished. It is said that he smeared himself with Vaseline to slip through a hole in his cell. In fact, he offered a guard 4,000 euros. To escape from prison, you don't need boarding when you just need to grease a guard's paw.
A series in five episodes:
2 – In Abidjan, game over for “evil lovers”
3 – Kenya discovers the terrible Shakahola massacre
4 – Boy Djinné, escape from Senegalese prison
5 – In Mali, when a serial killer was shake Fana
