By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Disgraced Dr Nandipha Magudumana has been granted leave to appeal the Bloemfontein High Court ruling that dismissed her application to have her arrest declared unlawful.
Magudumana had asked the court in May to declare her arrest in Tanzania and extradition to South Africa unlawful. She was arrested alongside escaped convict Thabo Bester and currently faces several charges relating to the escape.
She said that she was unlawfully extradited and wanted the court to order that she be released from custody and to rule that the Bloemfontein Magistrates’ Court (where she is facing several charges, including fraud, aiding an escape and violating dead bodies ) does not have jurisdiction to try her.
On 5 June, Judge Phillip Loubser found that Magudumana had indeed been extradited without process, but that she had consented to board the chartered plane that brought her back to South Africa.
Magudumana then lodged an application for leave to appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). She wanted the SCA to test whether she could have consented to an unlawful extradition.
She further stated in the notice that the government had not made a proper case in their affidavits that she had consented, saying only that she did not “verbally, or otherwise, offer any resistance or protest”, and that she “informed all and sundry that she wanted to return to South Africa to her children”.
On Friday afternoon the Supreme Court of Appeal said about Magudumana’s request: “Leave to appeal is granted to the Supreme Court of Appeal. The costs order of the court a quo in dismissing the application for leave to appeal is set aside and the costs of the application for leave to appeal in this court and the court a quo are costs in the appeal. If the applicant does not proceed with the appeal, the applicant is to pay these costs.”
Today’s order means Magudumana’s team must still file a record of appeal to the SCA and then there will be further court papers exchanged.
Magudumana has been kept at the Bizzah Makhate Correctional Services prison in Kroonstad, while Bester is incarcerated at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Facility in Pretoria.