Thabo Bester: Gayton McKenzie says politicians, prison officials and police involved in Facebook rapist’s escape
Cape Town - As the story of Facebook rapist Thabo Bester unfolds and more shocking details emerge by the day, the leader of the Patriotic Alliance (PA), Gayton McKenzie, who is a former convict, has shared his insights on the matter.
Bester supposedly burnt to death in his Mangaung Correctional Centre cell in May 2022. He had been serving a life sentence for rape and murder.
However, an explosive investigation by GroundUp revealed that Bester escaped from prison and was seen in Sandton shopping at a supermarket two months after he was apparently burnt to death.
Correctional Services admitted on Friday that the person burnt to death in May 2022, was not Bester, and that he likely escaped from the public-private prison facility in Mangaung.
On Monday, McKenzie, who is the Karoo District Mayor, took to Twitter to share insights about how Bester could have possibly executed his plan.
McKenzie, who spent 10 years in prison, said he understood the system, rules and its modus operandi.
“Something worse than an escape happened here, a murder took place, firstly I must state as a fact that many many people were involved in this plot, (it is) impossible that only those that have been mentioned so far (are) involved. The cover-up here is the second biggest crime.
“The cover-up couldn’t have happened without all three below-mentioned parties involved, politicians, prison officials, and police, you needed the involvement of all three, you cannot pull this off without all three parties,” McKenzie explained.
He said the easiest part of this puzzle was partly to solve the mystery of the dead body, by establishing the identity of the individual.
McKenzie has raised questions which many are seeking answers to.
“The easiest part of this puzzle to partly solve is the dead body, what must be established quickly
1) Did they bring in an already dead person from outside?
2) Did they kill a prisoner? Very easy to establish this in a prison set up, do a roll call today.”
He explained what a prison roll call was: ”A roll call is when you call all prisoners with their prison-issued ID cards, count and call out their names, if the number correspond with the number of prisoners housed in the prison, then you had a body that was brought in from the outside,” McKenzie explained.
If the number of prisoners and number on the prison records did not correlate, a prisoner must have been killed, he wrote.
McKenzie said both events brought to light a lot more questions and widened the circle of people possibly involved in moving a dead body around a prison.
He said it was “virtually impossible” that that could have been done without anything being picked up on the prison’s CCTV cameras.
He also raised suspicions on the fire itself, comparing it to other previous fires reported at correctional facilities.
“The fire that was started was a contained fire otherwise the prison would have burned and prisoners would have died of smoke inhalation, it happened in the past and a lot of prisoners died. I’m mentioning it to show that this was planned by very smart people with huge knowledge.”
McKenzie said that in order to escape from the prison grounds, one had to be connected to top officials.
“You can escape from the prison building but still need to get past the many guards at the gate which are forced by law to search all cars, so Thabo must have left in the car of a senior official who might get way not being searched or the people at the gate were involved.
“The inside of a jail consist of many gates, those gates are manned by different wardens each with a different key, only senior jail personnel have a master key that can open all gates, an investigation can show (who) signed out for the master key. The body and Thabo passed many gates,” McKenzie said.
He said that the day after the escape, large amounts of money must have changed hands for the “silence and unwillingness to investigate deeply”.
McKenzie described Bester as arrogant.
“Planning such an escape and walking around in Sandton speaks of arrogance mixed with political cover, he knew he was untouchable.
“The Dr girlfriend will soon be killed together with Thabo Bester, you don’t pull such a brilliant escape without very powerful politicians, cops and prison officials, these officials and politicians are now hunting harder for the suspects,” he wrote.
Previously, IOL reported Dr Nandipha Magudumana, the celebrity doctor linked to Bester, had allegedly abandoned her rented Hyde Park mansion.
Magudumana left the house last week, following the revelations about her alleged lover.
McKenzie has also called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to urgently set up a task team to investigate the matter.
He called for the nation to be addressed and updated within 30 days.
“The President should urgently put together a team that should investigate and report back in 30 days to the nation, the biggest that this team will discover is that most murders on the outside are being committed by people on the inside. I will give advice to the team for free,” McKenzie said as he ended his Twitter thread.
robin.francke@inl.co.za
IOL