Will prisons, police and G4S escape accountability just as Bester did?

Nothing quite captures the public imagination like a master criminal whose actions are so audacious and brazen, so calculated and clever, that we law-abiding mortals can only look on with a mixture of awe and admiration. And the one big unanswered question: how did they get away with it? 

The name Thabo Bester will therefore live on in infamy in the annals of South African crime, up there with the worst of them.

We shouldn’t, as is common in cases such as these, regard him as a hero.

For beyond the headlines and the salacious exposés lies a tale of incompetence, corruption and the awful realisation that with money anything is possible in South Africa. Everything has a price. 

How confident should we be that we have a correctional services system that lives up to its name, that imprisons the right people and that is incorruptible? How can we be sure that convicted criminals are not out on the streets, setting up a business, renting houses and shopping at Woolworths? And where is the accountability in all of this? 

Bester’s incredible escape from the privately run Mangaung prison in May last year has all the makings of a crime thriller. A body, then said to be Bester’s, was discovered burnt in a cell.

A decade before, in May 2012, Bester had been given a life term for rape and murder. This week, it emerged that an elaborate plot to spirit Bester out of prison had unfolded, with prison staff apparently collaborating to sneak him out of a side entrance while prison staff frantically extinguished a fire.

But the body was not Bester’s, it was a person who had evidently been killed beforehand. Bester was out, though no-one knew this until news agency GroundUp reported that a picture had emerged of Bester shopping at a Woolworths store in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. 

Behind every successful man there’s a determined woman, and that is where the story gets really interesting.

A former university girlfriend, the celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana, helped pull off this spectacular escape from justice.

It will take some time before all the details emerge, and it's a story from which none escape with much credit, not the prisons, not the police and not G4S

Police seemed to have been suspicious when Magudumana went to court to claim Bester’s body, saying she was his common-law wife and that she wanted to bury him.

Perhaps her phrasing was less than precise, but soon after receiving the body from an undertaker, she promptly had it cremated. 

Last week, it emerged that the renegade couple had rented expensive homes, conducted a media business and trashed the houses, partly under the pretext that they were a construction company that specialised in renovations. It also emerged that she and Bester had run a high-profile media company.

Bester, sporting a suit, joined proceedings via video link-up. He was said to be in New York, but little did attendees know that he was, in fact, in a Mangaung prison — at least we think it was. 

So many claims, so many questions, so few answers.

Certainly, the department of correctional services has a lot to answer for, though it appears much of the blame will be placed on the private company, G4S, that ran the prison, and will do so until 2026 when its contract runs out. 

It will take some time before all the details emerge, and it's a story from which none escape with much credit, not the prisons, not the police and not G4S. There have been stories of former prison guards showing off fancy cars, so clearly money must have changed hands. 

Beyond the audacity, and the inevitable public sentiment that celebrates clever crooks, the public deserves answers. Patently, this should not be allowed to happen again, which will require a full and comprehensive inquiry into the whole matter. 

Some will laugh, others will despair, but whatever the case, the public deserves answers and only a full judicial inquiry chaired by a judge can get to the bottom of this. 

Already, with crime as bad as it is, we hardly need more of it emanating from our prisons.