UK-based security giant G4S should lose a contract to run a private prison in South Africa after a convicted rapist and murderer faked his death and escaped with guards’ help, MPs have said.
Thabo Bester fled his cell after staging a fire and leaving a charred body to cover his jailbreak, before going on the run with his girlfriend, a celebrity doctor.
Bester lived the high life in Johannesburg for nearly a year, before police were finally alerted to the plot and he fled the country.
He and his girlfriend, Nandipha Magudumana, arrived back in South Africa on Thursday after they were arrested in Tanzania at the weekend.
Details of the convicted killer’s privileged life inside jail, his audacious escape and the alleged complicity of staff at a high-security private prison have astonished South Africa.
The prison’s night supervisor and two warders in the security camera control room have all been fired on suspicion of helping Bester escape amid the confusion of the pre-dawn blaze in his cell. One of them faces a murder charge over the body of the unidentified man that was left burned beyond recognition in Bester's cell.
Serious reputational risk’
Senior executives from G4S, a multinational with its headquarters in London, were grilled for hours this week by a committee of MPs.
Richard Dyantyi, with the ruling African National Congress, told the firm the prison break represented a “serious reputational risk” to South Africa and called for the immediate cancellation of the contract.
“Why must we keep this contract?” he asked G4S officials.
Glynnis Breytenbach, of the opposition Democratic Alliance, asked them if more warders and officials were bribed to help Bester escape from Mangaung Correctional Centre in the central Free State province.
He asked: “How many palms were greased?
“Are you honestly telling us this escape of Hollywood proportion was done with the assistance of only three people?”
Bester had been nicknamed the “Facebook rapist” for luring victims on the social media platform before raping and robbing them. He was sentenced to life in 2012 for rape, robbery and murder.
In May 2022, the charred body of a man was found in Bester’s cell, leading prison authorities to believe at first that he had set himself on fire.
Yet the prison and G4S officials conceded to MPs that a TV cabinet big enough to possibly hold and hide a dead body was brought into the prison in an unauthorised vehicle hours before Bester broke out. Neither the cabinet nor the vehicle was searched.