Thabo Bester’s escape from a privately-run South African prison raises questions about corruption

CASSPER LOTTER

RECENTLY, South Africans were told about an extraordinary escape story – they learnt that a convicted rapist, Thabo Bester, had been at large for a year after he’d escaped from a privately-run maximum security prison. In May 2022 the Department of Correctional services reported that he had burnt to death in his cell.

But a forensic report – which prison authorities only released recently after dogged reporting by journalists at the news outlet GroundUp, showed that the body wasn’t his.

Bester was re-arrested in Tanzania over the Easter weekend and arrests have been made in connection with his escape.

The story has raised questions about the management of privately-run institutions such as the Mangaung Maximum Security Prison in Bloemfontein from which Bester escaped. Ruth Hopkins is an investigative journalist who recently wrote a book – The Misery Merchants: Life and Death in a Private South African Prison – about G4S, a British multinational private security company