In a hastily arranged press conference, often incoherent and with few details provided, the Ministers of Justice and Police confirmed on Saturday that Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha Magudumana were arrested in Tanzania on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Bester and Magudumana were arrested along with a Mozambican national who was assisting them. They were found in possession of several passports, with different names, and none of the passports had been stamped.<\/p>\n
Police Minister Bheki Cele said that Tanzanian police had followed the fugitives as they were leaving their hotel in a black SUV. It is believed that they were on their way to crossing the Tanzanian border, presumably into Kenya.<\/p>\n
They were found in the Arusha region of Tanzania \u2014 which is close to the Kenyan border.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have confirmed with all relevant authorities in Tanzania that the fugitives are being processed in the Tanzanian justice system,\u201d Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said. \u201cWe are confident that we will receive maximum cooperation from our sister country Tanzania.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamola said it is likely that Bester and Magudumana will be deported to South Africa as they are in Tanzania illegally.<\/p>\n
Delegates from the South African police and Department of Correctional Service will depart for Tanzania on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Bester escaped from Mangaung Correctional Centre on 3 May 2022 after faking his death in a cell fire<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n The burned corpse found in the cell was collected by Magudumana but it was later confiscated by police.<\/p>\n Magudumana then approached the Pretoria High Court, asking for the corpse to be returned to her and claiming to be Bester\u2019s customary law wife.<\/p>\n Court papers filed by the South African Police Service revealed that there was no DNA match between the corpse and Bester\u2019s biological mother, therefore, the body found in the cell was not Thabo Bester.<\/p>\n After escaping from prison, Bester and Magudumana lived in a rented mansion in Sandton. Bester used an ID document and driver\u2019s licence under the name \u2018Katlego Nkwana\u2019.<\/p>\n The couple operated Arum Properties together, scamming several people into paying millions<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0for construction projects that were never completed.<\/p>\n The property manager of the rented mansion told GroundUp that Magudumana was behind on the rent. Days after GroundUp\u00a0first reported<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that Bester had escaped, the mansion was\u00a0vacated<\/a><\/strong>. It was raided by police two weeks later, on 4 April.<\/p>\n The Citizen\u00a0published<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0a video this week of Magudumana being confronted by a private investigator in January this year. The investigator challenges Magudumana about a R1.35-million Mercedes Benz she allegedly drove across the Zimbabwean border after failing to meet repayment obligations.<\/p>\n By\u00a0Daniel Steyn<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Marecia Damons<\/a> for GroundUp<\/a>. Republished under CC BY-ND 4.0<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n In a hastily arranged press conference, often incoherent and with few details provided, the Ministers of Justice and Police confirmed that Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha Magudumana were arrested outside South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341078,"featured_media":484463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40380],"tags":[35,84991,10048],"class_list":["post-487073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-nandipha-magudumana","tag-thabo-bester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341078"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNow read:\u00a0“Facebook rapist” ran high-end media company from prison<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"