Bruce Ndlovu , Sunday Life Reporter
AS the inquest into how she managed to help convicted murderer and rapist Thabo Bester escape a maximum prison facility, the question of her links to Zimbabwe continued to linger for disgraced South African medical practitioner Dr Nandipha Magudumana, as her bail application last week cast suspicious on relationships she shared with individuals from the country.
Bester and Dr Magudumana’s Bonnie and Clyde romance has captured the attention of the world, as the judicial system in Mzansi tries to untangle how a once respected medical practitioner somehow fell for the charms of one of the most dangerous men in a country teeming with dangerous men.
While Bester is seen as the mastermind criminal who for years has been able to play a daring game of cat and mouse with law enforcement authorities, Dr Magudumana is alleged to be his equally skilled sidekick, who managed to help him fool the world, faking his own death and resurrecting as a suave, self-styled businessman.
Last week, as she made a bid for freedom with a bail application, Dr Magudumana was a damsel in distress, as she claimed that she had been forced to flee South Africa against her will by the notoriously violent Bester.
However, as the prosecution knocked back her claims, it brought up her links again to Zimbabwe, where they fear she might flee again were she to be freed. In her application, Dr Magudumana had said that she would be staying with Dr Netsai Chibaya, a Zimbabwean medical practitioner currently working and living in South Africa.
“I also scrutinised the supplementary statement by one Netsai Michelle Chibaya,” SA Police Service’s Lieutenant Colonel Tieho Flyman told the Bloemfontein Magistrates Court via an affidavit.
“I have since established that is a Zimbabwean citizen who obtained permanent residency in the Republic of South Africa only in July 2018. Her residence on the system of the Department of Home Affairs is in Douglasdale in Johannesburg. The fact that this person has been staying at this address only from January 2022, is concerning.”
Magudumana’s links with Zimbabwe extend beyond her prospective host if she were to be granted bail.
Accused number nine in the case is Xanda Moyo, a Zimbabwean man who is charged with violating a corpse, fraud and harbouring and concealing an escaped offender.
According to the prosecution, Moyo’s sudden rise from gardener to security guard for Dr Magudumana is further evidence of her links to Zimbabwe.
“I wish to state further that accused 9, is a Zimbabwean who was employed by the applicant first as a gardener and later promoted to a security guard. A black Mercedes Benz which was rented by the applicant, which she never returned, and which was later found abandoned in Zimbabwe when she was still at large, is evidence that the applicant has close ties with Zimbabwe. Her friendship with this person she states that she will stay with, is concerning,” said Flyman.
The Mercedes Benz, driven across the Beitbridge Border Post and abandoned by Magudumana, has been pointed to as evidence that she and her lover always planned to use the country as an exit point of sorts. After her arrest, it emerged that shortly after Thabo Bester escaped from custody, Dr Magudumana, crossed the Beitbridge border into Zimbabwe and stamped her passport.
But upon returning to South Africa, Magudumana never entered the country the way she left, catching a flight from Bulawayo to OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.
“Using this passport, Dr Nandipha left the country on the 9th of May 2022. She left via Beitbridge Border Post but she returned three days later on the 12th of May 2022. She entered via OR Tambo, she was from Bulawayo,” Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi said at the time.
Later, it emerged that Magudumana paid a substantial deposit to a high-end car dealership for the vehicle before it was suspiciously taken across the Zimbabwean border. It is suspected Nandipha used the vehicle to cross the border where she abandoned it in preparation for Bester to pick it up and flee further into the continent.
However, defence of Magudumana, Magudumana’s defence attorney, advocate Frans Dlamini, said in a country that was sometimes overwhelmed with xenophobic sentiment, it was disturbing that Flyman was casting aspersions on Dr Chibaya, a naturalised South African.
“What is wrong with that? She was naturalised in July 2018. There is nothing wrong with that in terms of the law. The State wants to create something negative about Dr Chibaya. She is not in the country illegally. She has permanent residence, she is a doctor, she is an African person.
“The fact that she is referred to as ‘this person’ who has been residing since 2022, is concerning. It is inappropriate. “The lieutenant colonel knows she is a doctor, but he says this person. It is inappropriate and disrespectful, and I am inclined to say it sounds very xenophobic,” said Dlamini.