Multinational security company G4S is in the firing line with MPs having set down two days to hear the submission of the company, the Department of Correctional Services and Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons on the dramatic escape of Thabo Bester in May 2022.
Bester and his celebrity doctor girlfriend Nandipha Magudumana, and a Mozambican national are being held in Arusha, Tanzania, after they were arrested on Friday.
The meeting of the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on justice committee and correctional services was expected to hear the presentations last week, but it was called off after G4S failed to show.
This left MPs fuming and they decided to summon the multinational security company to appear before them.
Chairperson of the committee Bulelani Magwanishe said the Bester matter would be heard on Wednesday and Thursday.
This would enable all parties to make presentations and face questions from lawmakers.
“Although it is recess the committee has prioritised the matter in its fulfilment of its constitutional mandate to oversee the work of the executive.
“The committee’s session on this matter was postponed last week when G4S only sent a legal representative,” said Magwanishe.
The committee had said this matter was a priority for them and cannot be left unattended.
It was in the interest of the country to find out what happened when Bester escaped.
This was after G4S had insisted that Bester had died in a fire in prison after allegedly dying by suicide.
But the events over the last few weeks have revealed an elaborate plan to escape from Mangaung prison, with Bester and Magudumana later living together at a luxury mansion in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, for almost 10 months.
After it emerged that Bester had escaped, the police announced a manhunts to track the convicted rapist and murderer who has been at large for nearly a year.
Correctional Services confirmed two weeks ago that Bester did infact escape from prison after they finally confirmed the DNA of the person found burnt to death in Cell 35, was not Bester. An autopsy found that the unknown man was killed by blunt force trauma to the head.
Bester and Magudumana were finally nabbed in Tanzania on Friday.
Government has sent top police, correctional services and home affairs officials to ensure they are successfully deported back to South Africa.
Mgudumana’s father Zolile Sekeleni, 65, and former warder at the prison, Senohe Matsoara, appeared in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court on murder charges related to the unknown man in Cell 35.