Zolile Sekeleni, the father of Dr Nandipha Magudumana, and his co-accused were formally charged with several serious crimes linked to the daring escape of Facebook rapist, Thabo Bester, on Tuesday.
Thabo Bester escape suspects charged with murder
The 65-year-old was unveiled on the docks of the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court alongside Senohe Matsoara, the ex-G4S corrections officer implicated in the prison break.
Court proceedings were brief and both suspects were remanded in custody until bail hearings on Monday, 17 April 2023.
According to court documents, Sekeleni and Matsoara were charged with defeating the ends of justice, fraud, arson and murder.
From what we understand, state prosecutors believe Dr Nandipha’s father and Matsoara had something to do with the death of the corpse that was smuggled into Bester’s prison cell the day he escaped.
Police Minister Bheki Cele had revealed, during a press briefing held this past weekend, that an autopsy report noted the John Doe’s cause of death as homicide by a blunt object.
“A case of murder is under investigation following the outcome of the DNA analysis that confirmed that the body of the deceased which was found, was not of Thabo Bester. The autopsy report went on to further reveal that the deceased had died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head, and was already dead, prior to the arson incident,” Cele said at the time.
At this juncture, the state’s case may seek to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the two suspects were crucial cogs in plotting and executing Bester’s daring escape, and were instrumental in defeating the ends of justice by torching the corpse beyond forensic recognition to further the Facebook rapist’s prison break.
Who is Dr Nandipha’s father? – Five things to know about Zolile Sekeleni
Sekeleni and Matsoara’s court appearance occurs in the midst of ongoing extradition talks between the South African government and Tanzania, where Bester and Dr Nandipha were arrested on Friday, 7 April 2023.
We did a bit of research and found these five interesting facts about Zolile Sekeleni:
He was an Eastern Cape educator
Sekeleni was a respected educator in the Eastern Cape. Before his move to Gauteng in the latter parts of the 2010s, he worked for the Department of Education as a senior specialist.
Why he moved to Johannesburg
Zolile joined his children, Dr Nandipha and her whistleblower brother Nkosinathi Sekeleni, and relatives in Johannesburg and took on contract work at the Education Department invigilating and possibly marking exams shortly before the pandemic.
At least, that’s what he told relatives back in the Eastern Cape at the time, in several Facebook posts.
Of course, we now know there may have been more nefarious motivations behind the 65-year-old’s move to Gauteng, since at the time, Dr Nandipha was flaunting a lavish lifestyle allegedly funded by Bester’s scams.
His suspicious stint in property investment
Sekeleni frequently boasted about his commercial interests in property investment on his social media, and while he does not have a real estate profile, his celebrity daughter was at the centre of a million-rand scam involving a shell company, Arum Properties, she ran with Bester.
According to GroundUp, the fugitive couple allegedly conned several victims into paying “millions of rands for construction projects, but never delivered the goods.”
“Clients of Arum Properties told GroundUp that soon after signing on and paying their deposits, they started to realise that something was wrong,” the report stated.
It remains unknown if Zolile Sekeleni was, in any way, linked to the Arum Properties scam.
He’s a staunch supporter of his daughter
Sekeleni made headlines shortly before his arrest, when he categorically stated his refusal to cooperate with investigations into his daughter’s disappearance during a televised eNCA interview.
“I don’t want any person to her whereabouts because I don’t trust anybody. It’s a very sensitive matter. I have left it to the people to do their investigations and all that,” he said at the time.
In fact, Sekeleni’s support of his daughter went as far as being complicit in several serious crimes linked to the daring escape of Bester, who was convicted in the early 2010s for multiple sexual assault charges and murder.
Where he stayed when he was arrested
By the time investigators zeroed in on Sekeleni as a perpetrator in Bester’s escape and the murder of a John Doe whose corpse was used to replace the Facebook rapist in his torched cell, the 65-year-old was living in Port Edward, a small resort town situated on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
