Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has revealed that convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester was never registered on any Home Affairs database which captures all legal citizens in the country.
This includes the National Population Register (NPR), the asylum seeker and refugee system, and the visa database.
The Minister was on Friday updating the media on the escape saga that involves Bester and his aesthetic doctor girlfriend, Dr Nandipha Magudumana.
The pair fled the country after it was found that Bester faked his death at Mangaung Correctional Centre last year.
They were repatriated from Tanzania on Thursday where Bester was immediately transported to the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Facility in Pretoria.
The convict was dubbed the “Facebook rapist” for luring women on social media with promises of modelling contracts but robbing and raping them instead.
According to the Minister, the only records of Bester that exist are at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital where he was born on 13 July 1986 after the Home Affairs officials tracked down his mother.
“We rushed to Bara Hospital and checked in their archives and what the lady told us is true. So, Thabo Bester does exist as Thabo Bester and the mother was recorded as Meisie Bester,” he explained.
“However, what confused us is that in a TV interview, she said she had four children and when we went to the NPR all three children were there but there was no Thabo Bester.”
This is because, Bester’s mother, according to the Motsoaledi, was never registered herself until the age of 37 in 2002.
It was only when her mother, who was a domestic worker, died that her aunt decided to take her to Home Affairs for registration of birth. She was then registered as a Meisie Mabaso and took her aunt's surname who registered her.
At the same time she decided to register her children under the Mabaso surname, but not Bester.
Bester, who is the firstborn of the four children, had already fled home at the age of 16.
“Nobody knew where he was and that’s why the mother couldn’t register him anywhere.”
The department’s investigation led them to a primary school where he had dropped out in Grade 5 in 2002. This is the same year his grandmother passed away.
The mother’s first contact with her son after his disappearance in his teens was in 2011 when he was arrested.
“Because Thabo never took an ID, never got married, never took a passport, he simply never existed,” Motsoaledi told the journalists.
“The only place you could find him was at Correctional Services where he was an inmate and the South African Police Service crime data.That’s where you’ll find his fingerprints and picture.”
The passport he was found carrying in Tanzania belongs to an American citizen and was never used, the Minister added.
He also traced Magudumana whose passport will expire in 2027 and said she did not use her passport to cross any border when they were on the run.
The doctor was found with two other passports that do not belong to her but Dr Mmereka Ntshani also known as Dr Pashy.
Magudumana made a brief court appearance yesterday where she was charged with assisting a prisoner to escape, harbouring an offender, defeating the ends of justice, violation of a corpse and fraud. – SAnews.gov.za
