Pic: Lucky Nkuyane
Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has revealed that it cost the taxpayer R1.4 million to bring back Thabo Bester and his girlfriend Dr Nandipha Magudumana from Tanzania on a chartered flight.
Dr 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.
Dr 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.”
Dr 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.”
