SOUTH AFRICA – What was meant to be a sedate pre-trial hearing in the Free State High Court in South Africa got an injection of life from convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester, after he claimed that he feared for his life and thus wanted to be sentenced to death immediately as the state had made his life a living hell in prison.
Bester is on trial for escaping from the Mangaung Correctional Centre in May 2022. In that escape, the body of Katlego Bereng was allegedly used as a decoy after it was snuck into the privately run facility and then later set alight in Bester’s cell.
Bester was re-captured, along with his girlfriend, Dr Nandipha Magudumana, in Tanzania on April 20.
In a rant, Bester said that it would be better if he was just slapped with a death sentence, as he was being treated unfairly by authorities.
“I am requesting… that I not waste these people’s lives. Under the previous Act of Correctional Services, a death sentence is (a suitable sentence). Let the public sign a petition, and I will be given a death sentence, and I will agree to it so we end this matter.”
Bester also claimed that he had been kept in solitary confinement for 15 months, which was now affecting his mental health.
“I am under section 29 of the apartheid government. That is how I am treated in this current constitutional and free country. I am treated with two hours of family visits for 30 minutes.
“I am given one consultation or two if I am lucky, and, in that process, I am kept in a hole by myself with no one outside. They have removed the people that were outside my door.
“I feel that my life is in danger because the people that are responsible for this charge, I am under their hands. How can I then be freely able to defend myself, your Honour, if the court is not able to give me an ear in whatever issues I may have?” he asked.
As Bester continued with his emotional speech in front of a stunned courtroom, Nandipha Magudumana held back tears.
“I feel that my life is in danger because the people that are responsible for this charge, I am under their hands. How can I then be freely able to defend myself, your Honour, if the court is not able to give me an ear in whatever issues I may have?”
“I have two months left in the time period that I have to serve in C-Max, but I know for a fact that I will not be treated fairly and released as anyone else because there is a time period that you serve in prison, like that. There is no human right in that prison,” he said. Telly Africa
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