Magudumana wants to stop release of ‘Tracking Thabo Bester’ doccie

The lawyers for Nandipha Magudumana, the girlfriend of Facebook rapist and murderer Thabo Bester has demanded that the Multichoice group hand them a copy of their soon to be released documentary titled Tracking Thabo Bester by Saturday.

Magudumana faces charges of fraud, corruption, aiding and assisting a prisoner to escape, arson and the violation of bodies relating to the escape of Bester from prison in May 2022.

The four-part investigation of the Tracking Thabo Bester series screens in two halves on Showmax on 15 and 22 March 2024.

Legal demand

Magudumuna wants her legal team to view the Showmax documentary before it airs or she will be taking the channel to court.

In the letter of demand, Magudumuna’s lawyers argue the streaming of the documentary series may cause “irreparable harm” and give rise to claims for damages in respect of which Bester’s girlfriend  expressly reserves all her rights, in to.

“We have instructions to request that our client and her legal team including the attorneys, senior and junior counsel be provided with a full and complete copy of the documentary series on or before Saturday 9 March 2024 at 14:00.

“This is in order to establish if there are indeed any issues which may prejudice her rights, failing which, an urgent application will be brought in the High Court of South Africa, including but not limited, to interim interdictory relief to stop the streaming of the documentary series and any other material related thereto,” Magudumana’s lawyers said in the letter of demand.

ALSO READ: True-crime doccie, ‘Tracking Thabo Bester’ on Showmax soon

“Tracking Thabo Bester”

The first episode of Tracking Thabo Bester follows GroundUp journalists as they investigate an anonymous tip off that the burnt body at Mangaung Correctional Centre may not have been Bester.

Subsequent episodes look at why Bester was called the Facebook rapist and in jail originally; how a celebrity doctor fell for a convicted criminal and left her children behind to go on the run with him to Tanzania; and who really died in Cell 35.

Trial

The trial of Bester, Magudumana and their co-accused was supposed to begin in the Free State High Court at the end of February but has been postponed to 5 June 2024.

Bester and Magudumana were arrested in April, about 10km out of Arusha in Tanzania, after fleeing the hotel they were staying in.

The Facebook rapist escaped from the Mangaung Correctional Centre (MCC) in Bloemfontein in May 2022, after it was initially believed he had committed suicide by setting himself alight in his cell.

However, the plan went south when Bester was spotted shopping at a Woolworths in Sandton City, nearly two months after his reported death at the prison.

Bester who committed a spate of robberies, rape and even murder, was sentenced to 50 years in jail by the Durban Magistrate’s Court in 2011.

ALSO READ: WATCH: Trouble in paradise for Nandipha and Thabo Bester?