By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The private charter flight to return fugitive couple Thabo Bester and Nandipha Magudumana to South Africa, cost the taxpayer R1.4 million.
Minister Aaron Motsoaledi appeared before Parliament’s home affairs committee on Tuesday.
Bester, who is a convicted murderer and rapist, escaped custody at the privately-run Mangaung Correctional Centre in May 2022 by faking his own death.
Amid a public uproar, Bester and Magudumana were traced and arrested in Tanzania on 7 April.
Motsoaledi told MPs that 14 officials had to travel to the Tanzania to repatriate the two.
“We asked any company that could give us an airplane that can carry 14 people, which would be able to get landing rights and all the documentation on their own without the help from the state in less than 24 hours. There are companies which responded. The last one at R1.4 million was the cheapest of them all.”
Motsoaledi said the flight also needed to meet all the requirements set by the Tanzanian authorities.
“Which commercial flights, do you think it will have accepted and the passengers also sit comfortably seeing two people in handcuffs entering with a whole lot of people who have to be there to make sure that they don’t run away? I don’t think any aircraft would have allowed that.”
The minister said the preconditions set by Tanzanian authorities for handing over the couple to their South African counterparts also had to be borne in mind.
“They opted on deportation, not extradition or any other system. When a person is deported to their country of origin, they are handed only to immigration officials of that country, not any other authorities, and the Tanzanians said they are not prepared to hand over Thabo Bester to police.”
Motsoaledi said that the cost of the flight would be split three ways with the Department of Correctional Services and the police.
Bester appeared in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court on Friday for the first time since he was recaptured after his escape last year, and he will be back in court on 16 May.
Dr Nandipha Magudumana, who was Bester’s accomplice, also appeared in court for her alleged role in helping Bester escape from prison.
Magudumana’s father Zolile Sekeleni was granted R10 000 bail in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court.
Sekeleni and his co-accused – Magudumana, former G4S employee Senohe Matsoara, and camera installer Teboho Lipholo – are charged with helping convicted rapist and murderer Bester escape from the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein in May 2022.