Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s bail was denied, and she will be reunited with her lover, Thabo Bester, on October 11, 2023.
On Monday, September 11, the Bloemfontein magistrate’s court denied the controversial Dr Nandipha Magudumana bail and release from detention.
Nandipha Magudumana was denied bail in court on Monday. At her next court appearance on October 11, she will face allegations of fraud, corruption, violating a corpse, defeating the objects of justice, helping and abetting an inmate to escape from lawful custody, concealing an escaped offender, and arson.
Magistrate Estelle de Lange was quoted in the judgement as declaring that Magudumana was “a definite flight risk… I believe she failed to persuade the court that her release on bond is in the best interests of justice. As a result, the application for bail is denied.”
Magudumana has been held in custody for about five months since her arrest in Tanzania with her rapist and murderer boyfriend Thabo Bester. The couple was found in possession of several passports with different names.
This of course comes after being on the run for two weeks. Bester became one of South Africa’s most talked about fugitives after having succeeded in staging his death in 2022 by starting a fire in his prison cell and dumping the lifeless body of Katlego Bereng in his place in the elaborate plan to escape from the maximum security prison, Mangaung Correctional Centre.
Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s bail was denied, thus she will be returned to the Bizzah Makhate Correctional Centre in Kroonstad, where she was previously detained, according to EWN. Meanwhile, after being nabbed in April, the escaped criminal was sent to the C-Max portion of Pretoria’s Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Centre. He and Magudumana will appear in court again in a month.
