Original subtitles

That photo revealed that a rapist and a murderer was out in the public.

Correctional services confirmed

that Bester did not die in a fire in his cell in May last year.

Bester escaped by faking his own death.

He was allegedly in the company of the celebrity doctor,

Nandipha Magudumana, Bester's supposed customary wife.

When the picture leaked,

I knew she was in big trouble.

That's when people started asking,

"Penny, your doctor. Have you seen the stories? Is this a dream?"

I think she also owes a duty to the nation

to go to the police and to tell us what her role has been.

She calls me, but in a panicked state.

She told me clearly this is a plot and a plan to destroy her.

And then she said,

"For your safety and for the safety of the therapists, kindly please,

close the practice."

Little did we know that was the last day

one would ever set foot at Optimum Medical Aesthetics.

Then Nandipha calls my dad.

Insisting that I must run out of that suburb.

"Your life is in danger.

You might be murdered there."

"What's happening?"

"No, don't ask questions. Just leave."

"Something bad is gonna happen."

How did a TK become a Thabo Bester?

And how did a Thabo Bester meet up with a Nandipha?

What actually happened?

Thanks for staying with us. Let's now reflect on one of our top stories.

The Thabo Bester saga.

He's been walking about,

living amongst us all these months.

Ah, good afternoon, Captain.

Wow, Captain, South Africa is a movie on its own.

You usually hear about a waiting trialist escaping from custody,

but not a convicted prisoner.

When the whistle was blown about Bester's escape,

every news editor and their dog wanted details of what actually happened.

There was a serial rapist out and about. You know, on the loose.

And at that period it was close to a year since he had escaped.

Nandipha's role in the escape was pretty vague to a lot of people.

And it was evident that he wouldn't have been able to pull this off all by himself.

So, our brief was to first track down Nandipha

and establish whether she was hiding Thabo.

So we went to her practice.

But we got there and it was closed.

When we rocked up today the practice is completely closed.

Glass doors shut, the lights are off.

Which fuelled speculation and raised more questions

about her alleged involvement in Thabo's escape.

The celebrated Dr Nandipha Magudumana

was right at the centre of it.

I got quite a number of calls and messages…

clients who wanted to know

what is it that they're reading about.

Before we knew it, there was a statement on Instagram

that the practice would be open soon.

And I honestly did not know as to what was happening.

We also learned about where they lived.

Massive mansion in Hyde Park.

You know, it's in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg North.

I was blown away.

High walls, a lot of security around. Offers a lot of privacy.

It's the perfect place for someone to hide.

Sometimes your fortunes can change

from being in a prison cell to living in a mansion just like that.

If I had escaped from prison,

I wouldn't mind being there because you get a lot of sunlight,

you get a lot of room to exercise, and you can move around freely.

But we found that they hired security guards

to come and clean out the house in the middle of the night.

Thabo and Nandipha escaped.

I hoped that she was talking to lawyers, consulting with people.

But when she did not pick up her kids from school,

I knew that she had gone.

She was on the run with Thabo Bester.

For her to even dump her kids and run off with this man?

Like… No, man.

Mm-mmm. Something is off.

I don't know what it is, but, like, uh-uh.

The mood around the country…

they couldn't believe that this is actually happening.

Because of, uh… it is a serious security breach.

So it was very important for, you know,

the law enforcement, together with us forensic practitioners

to put our, you know, heads together, resources…

So, I then managed to get Dr Nandipha…

Her latest numbers, including the numbers of Thabo Bester.

So that if any contact had to be made, especially to the kids,

then we are able to see that they are indeed here in South Africa.

But nobody really knew where they were.

I did try phone her. Her phones were down.

Mmm. I did try to call her.

And the minute she put her social networks down,

and no one could find her,

I knew dark days was coming for my family.

So we anticipated that the next thing would be

for the couple to… to flee.

Interpol was alerted.

Dr Nandipha's passport was red-flagged.

Yeah, then after that,

it was breaking news after breaking news, after breaking news.

A manhunt is underway…

…of the murderer and rapist…

The entire nation is captivated by this…

He escaped prison…

The police have already started to unleash themselves.

Police calling for any information

about Thabo Bester's whereabouts to come forward.

It seems so unbelievable.

I think a number of departments were caught with their pants down.

Parliament wants answers. They want accountability.

And at what stage do you warn the victims, the rape victims,

that this person is out?

They basically embarrassed a whole government.

What happened? We need to know that.

How did Thabo Bester

finally manage to escape from maximum security prison?

That was the big question.

How did Thabo Bester manage to break out of prison?

A prison escape of this magnitude is not something that can be done on the fly.

Escapes are usually done in a hastily manner,

like opportunistic in nature.

Prison guards letting their guard down.

But this was extraordinary.

To find out what went wrong,

a parliamentary briefing had been held about what exactly unfolded

the night where Bester escaped.

If you think of the specifics of it,

he would need a body to serve as a decoy for this elaborate plan.

So it seems as if the only option was for him to get a body from outside.

After hitting a stumbling block with Hyde Park Property and her office,

our next focus was to track down the body that Nandipha and Thabo Bester used

as a decoy for his escape from prison.

And that led me to Bloemfontein.

While in… in Bloemfontein,

I managed to get a contact working at a government mortuary,

and he broke down to me what transpired.

A few weeks before Bester's escape,

there was a distressed young woman who walked in,

saying that she was looking for her father's body.

Um, she believed that her father had passed on.

Well, they presented to her a photo book and she identified his body…

so that she could bury him.

'Cause under usual circumstances,

if someone claims a body, the body gets buried.

That's it.

It's in this dam that the body's found floating

on the 29th of April 2022.

We're at the Kopano Nokeng River

just outside of Bloemfontein,

where a man who was picking up firewood found a sleeping bag.

In the sleeping bag he found that there was a dead body.

He called the police.

The police came and investigated and ruled it as a drowning.

Forensic pathologists were called onto the scene.

They took the body to the Free State Government Mortuary.

At the Free State Government Mortuary,

workers attempted to conduct an autopsy on this body.

But then found there was a tag attached to this body

which belonged to the mortuary itself.

They cross-referenced this tag

with, uh, details that they had in their record books.

And then found that this body was claimed by Dr Nandipha a week prior,

claiming that this was her father who had gone missing.

However, we know that Dr Nandipha's father is alive and well.

Clearly, something went wrong with this plan to use this body as a decoy

and that body was thrown into the river in Bloemfontein.

It appeared as though the timing

of Thabo Bester's escape was completely off.

A couple of days later, allegedly,

Nandipha made her way to the morgue at the national hospital yet again…

…where she claimed another body.

But this time, she said that it was the body of her friend's brother.

It was ridiculous because what is she doing with all these bodies?

Apparently, what Dr Magudumana did is, she had two funerals for these bodies.

Both bodies were buried in Botshabelo Cemetery.

It was discovered much later when police exhumed the graves.

In one coffin, they found mielie meal.

And then in another coffin, they found, uh, wors and meat.

This was to cover up their trail.

One of my sources at the time, he had pictures of these coffins.

And he was like,

"You know what? Strange things are happening in Bloemfontein."

It appears as though that she was looking for the perfect corpse

to use as a decoy in Bester's escape.

It shows you the extent at which, uh, Dr Magudumana and Thabo Bester

had planned Bester's escape.

How did-did this young woman, uh, get into taking a corpse?

Burying the corpse?

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine for my… my daughter to do such things.

Hearing this and seeing all these reports,

I-I couldn't make sense of it.

These are two different people to me.

Love… it can make you do unbelievable things,

like what the doctor did.

To some shocked, some young people actually admire Dr Nandipha,

saying, "That is true love."

People want to excuse it and say,

"Yeah, you know, if I was in love I'd also do this."

What kind of love is this?

If "love was blind" was a person, it would be Dr Nandipha.

Because I don't understand how she was convinced

by someone like Thabo Bester.

Like, how smooth was he?

Remember, Thabo was a smooth talker.

He will pull you in.

You will come a member of his world.

My name is Morui. Surname is Mphou.

I used to work for G4S prison.

When Thabo came in, it was national news.

There were warnings about him

from the government sector to the private sector,

that, "Take note, once he speaks to you, you are hooked."

So we were cautioned not to interact.

We were afraid of the language

that he can use to pull you in his world.

So that's how he was highly connected with security.

And he was able to move everywhere.

That in itself says this guy's starting to have powers.

Mess with Thabo Bester, then you will be in trouble.

You'll be in trouble.

When we saw Thabo's death on social media,

immediately I started laughing.

I said to my ex-colleague, when we met,

"How is it possible that a person can burn in ashes,

with a cell with so minimum stuff?

What have you guys done?"

That is when we began to conversate, me and my ex-colleagues.

Then I came to some understanding of what happened.

Now, when you look at this map,

this is the map of Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein.

This is how it looks.

These are the housing units.

This is the broadway where the actual escape took place.

The idea that someone would've been able to bring in a dead body

into a super max prison…

that can only have occurred

with significant assistance from a whole array of officials.

A couple of days after Nandipha had claimed a body from the morgue,

a prison official drove a bakkie to the Mangaung Correctional Centre.

At the back of this bakkie was a large TV cabinet.

Inside that TV cabinet was a body.

A few days before the escape,

the bakkie arrived and it came through here.

The bakkie drove in sally port.

The sally port is a big door that allows vehicles to go in.

The bakkie had not been thoroughly checked

and was able to bypass any form of security.

And the bakkie then left the corpse in this workshop in this area.

Cell 35 was located where the CCTV cameras…

It was almost in a blind spot and quite close to the emergency exits.

A prison official allegedly then moved the body to a wheelie bin,

and he then took that wheelie bin

to what was known as the "dark room" of the prison.

The dark room is next to cell 35.

Then after leaving the body, it was on standby for the actual escape.

The same time Bester had applied to be moved to the segregation unit.

And in his application he claimed that the 26 Numbers Gang was after him,

and that he feared for his life.

The strategy was he had to be in cell 35 in order for him to move out easily.

Cell 35, at the time, is now the waiting area

for his planned escape.

At the time of the planned escape,

an official went to the cell,

gave Thabo Bester the G4S uniform to wear.

Because if you want to escape, you need to be in uniform.

And Thabo must leave the inmate uniform inside the cell.

Now Thabo has to leave. It's time.

Bester went out through an emergency door.

Then they ran together down the stairs,

where the cameras are now on blind spots, through the admin building.

That is when they were caught by this camera over here.

Immediately once there is the confirmation that he went out,

then that is when an official can start burning

whatever that is left in that cell.

He took the wrapped corpse, put it in cell 35.

The body was put under a mattress

after propellant was placed onto the face and hands.

And that cell was then set alight.

A number of people heard the sound, even employees.

Like, boom!

It went again, again. Boom!

That is when the fire caught, and the cell was now on fire.

It is one of the most improbable things that I've encountered,

not just as a judge, but in my life.

You would not expect something so stupefyingly improbable to occur.

It was mind-boggling.

What a plot, that's all I'll say.

I can understand why everyone's gripped by this.

-You think the guy's a genius? -Nah, not a genius.

Let's not give him some cult hero status 'cause he's not that. He's far from that.

-He raped and killed someone's daughter. -Oh, yeah, yeah.

One would think that after escaping from prison,

you'd want to keep a pretty low profile,

but the two of them were clearly living the high life.

She was living the life of glitz and glam.

She was always travelling,

always attending these high society events,

and hanging out with celebrities and very prominent people.

It was definitely just a life of luxury that she was living.

So following Bester's escape, she'd been on TV in various interviews.

I want to go straight there, the way that I believe is the right way

with good intentions.

While Thabo Bester had been out for months and living his life with Dr Nandipha.

Bester and Nandipha were living together.

And according to the property manager,

the lease was signed in both of their names,

and it was Nandipha and TK Nkwana.

TK Nkwana was one of Bester's many identities,

and seemed to be the most prevalent and recent name

that… that Bester had been using when he was scamming people.

I think at a stage, it was believed that he had close to 20 different aliases.

He would Photoshop his face on the bodies of celebrities,

one of them being Michael B. Jordan,

to convince people to not only trust him, but to invest in his companies.

It speaks again to the arrogance of this man.

Like, "I'm right under your noses and nobody knows it's me."

As far as everyone was concerned,

Thabo Bester died, um, from suicide in a prison cell.

But she knew the true identity of this person that she was harbouring.

She allegedly plotted his escape with him, and now she was giving him refuge.

She definitely pulled the wool over us and the closest members in her circle.

There could be a lot of dead people

because of… They fell for… for Thabo Bester and Nandipha.

Hi, everybody. This is Dr Nandipha, and welcome to the new year.

We are expecting amazing and great things from iMedia this year.

In 2023, iMedia reached out to me on Instagram with a opportunity.

Basically, they were looking for presenters,

and I was told I need to go to Cape Town for auditions.

So, I was now talking to a guy called Neo.

Him requesting to meet me, it was just to, you know, try to close and seal the deal

and convince me to actually go to Cape Town.

So we met at the restaurant.

Yeah, man. Something felt offish.

My crew is from Joburg.

Um, the idea was to find people

that will be producing luxury content on social media.

-Yeah, yeah. -And--

To think, there I was sitting with a murderer, on the same table.

Neo told me that I'd make, like, 57 million per year. Like, wow.

I was like, "No."

And then he mentioned Nandipha,

and I knew Dr Nandipha as someone that you can trust.

So she called me and assured me that I need to go to Cape Town. This is legit.

She even went as far as following me on Instagram with her verified account.

I just couldn't ignore the red flags.

The following day, I just didn't go to Cape Town.

I didn't take that flight.

You know, I could have lost my life.

I could've been killed. I could've been kidnapped.

Of course I'm angry at her.

I mean, I'm a mother. I had lost my husband.

For her to deceive me, to lure me, to convince me to go to Cape Town…

Who knows what could have happened?

Who must look after my child?

And I knew, when she called me, that she's part of it.

Yeah, I-I still don't understand who is Nandipha.

It is ten minutes after four o'clock.

Taking your voice note about, specifically, Dr Nandipha Magudumana.

I mean, we are here trying to fight gender-based violence

and yet you're still finding women

that still be protecting people like Thabo Bester.

This entire thing of Dr Nandipha, it's…

I'm just in complete and utter shock.

You've literally just thrown away your entire career,

and I still don't understand why.

It's just bizarre.

Here's a young woman who…

You must be, like, the pride of your family, your village, your friends.

You've got two young children. You're beautiful.

I'm like, "What happened?"

Dr Nandipha's involvement in this,

I'd say that piqued the interest of the public,

especially seeing that her name was the one that was trending.

Now, the brazen prison escape.

Not a complete story without the involvement of his lover,

Dr Nandipha Magudumana.

Much like her life, her fall from grace was public.

South Africa hasn't really seen a Bonnie and Clyde type of duo.

It's just a dichotomy of these two characters.

One is a really successful and well-respected individual in society,

and the other is basically a convict.

Them combining to plot and commit an escape from prison

was something no one would have thought of.

We all have skeletons in our closet.

In Nandipha's case, hers was in a prison cell.

I can't sit here and say…

…"Well, how did she engage with someone who was behind bars?"

I didn't say, "No, that's not possible."

I was just like, "It's possible. I just wanna know how it happened."

It's not unusual for a person of a reasonable social profile

to get involved with a prisoner.

And Thabo Bester, he lured women. And we don't know what he did to lure her.

Perhaps she lured him.

Uh, one shouldn't underestimate her agency in all of this.

She was a very competent person of great ability and agency herself.

We're not clear on exactly how they met.

But in her court application that Nandipha had filed after the escape,

in order to release the body to her,

she did say that they met at Wits University.

In 2006, while she was studying medicine

and Bester was supposedly studying law,

and somewhere along the line, he moved to Cape Town and they lost touch.

Currently, there is no proof that Thabo had actually attended Wits.

But she then found out through media reports that he had been arrested.

From 2017, she decided to go and rekindle their relationship in prison.

So we went to Mangaung Prison and asked for the visitor's log.

And the visitor's log was a remarkable piece of evidence

because it showed Dr Nandipha Magudumana visiting him regularly

and visiting him up to about six weeks before the escape.

During 2020, where he supposedly proposed to her while he was at prison,

and that qualified her as his customary law wife.

But not really surprising that Dr Nandipha Magudumana would form

some sort of attachment with him,

because part of his lure was that he appeared to be a good-looking person

with social proficiency, with articulacy.

I believe she got involved with Thabo Bester

because his ability to manipulate people and his ability to spin a yarn on people.

And he probably said the right things to her,

probably things that she had never heard before,

and, you know, she was intrigued.

But, yeah. I would definitely… would love to know why.

What is it? Like, how did he manage to convince you?

Hey. I hope you're good.

We always wanna make sure we are safe. Especially for your family.

You're a great person.

Since you requested for me to do a recording,

I'll try my best to cover as much as I can.

Around 2009, he wanted something done that has to do with business,

that has to do with money.

We were the guys.

And then we met our beloved politicians.

Relationships turned sour.

Everybody sort of glocked up.

Meaning everybody sort of got their guns.

Obviously expected them to come maybe kill me or something like that.

But they…

They created a situation

where I woke up and I was in the papers, "The Facebook Rapist."

At first I looked at it and I laughed and I was like… …"Come on."

Me? Facebook Rapist? Are you high?

I have never even been on Facebook.

But they created stories. They fabricated stories.

Next thing, it was the biggest story in South Africa.

Yeah. And that became my new image.

"The Facebook Rapist" who rapes and kills for cell phones and laptops. Oh, my God.

Wow. I have not heard that before.

He plays the victim very, very well.

It was always a thing of, you know, "Other people coming after me."

Everybody else is always trying to set him up.

He's a blatant pathological liar.

That's what Thabo Bester is.

"I don't have any family, and nobody comes to visit me,

and you're my only friend."

And I can imagine that those are the things

that he would have whispered in her ear.

I'm pretty sure that he played on her soft side.

It was in the media that I killed somebody in Cape Town.

That's just the craziest thing.

I know I didn't kill her.

And they said to me, "Look…

we can do this the easy way or the simple way.

All we want is for you to plead guilty."

I didn't understand what was happening. I was… I was scared. I was confused.

In less than three days, I was doing 60 years.

From being free… Then everyone was gone.

I didn't have anyone.

People wanted me to die, so bad.

They made me feel like I'm some disease

that needs to be destroyed.

This man is a complete psychopath.

And I mean, that's how they operate.

Police say a manhunt is currently underway in an effort to capture

the rapist and murderer, Thabo Bester.

The police had no idea

where Dr Nandi and Thabo Bester were at that point.

They couldn't reveal too much information

without alerting Nandipha and Thabo that they were possibly on their trail.

But it left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths.

Why the delay in catching him?

The concern is that if he's been out of bars for about a year,

what about the people who live in fear of him?

What the hell is happening in South Africa?

We are living, literally, amongst people who have committed serious crimes.

I feel like we are not safe anymore.

It is appalling on so many fronts.

I also want to take this opportunity to apologise to the victims

and to all the people of South Africa that this dangerous criminal was let loose.

Why wasn't an alert put out?

Why wasn't the public notified almost immediately?

But more so, why weren't the victims and their families notified?

At the time, every media publication was out on this story,

about Thabo Bester and the escape.

This was our story.

And I think, at that point, we'd been getting so many tip-offs

and so many phone calls from whistle-blowers,

just wanting to give us information.

And we realised that we had received an email

from someone telling us that, around 2018,

Thabo had been running this company called 21st Century Media.

And at the time, Thabo Bester, for all intents and purposes, was in jail.

And we are here.

In June of 2018, 21st Century Media was going to have a in-house launch,

where they had invited very well-known people and some dignitaries.

Very glamorous, very glitzy, and these guests were told

that they were going to be receiving a keynote address

from the chairman himself, Tom Motsepe, to invest in 21st Century Media.

Pioneers who are strong narrators,

telling riveting stories and brand experiences.

Tom Motsepe was this supposed businessman

who had investments in multiple companies across the country,

whether it was in the media space or the business space,

and he was supposedly a Harvard graduate.

Uh, I think they said, at the time, that he was abroad,

and that's why he couldn't attend in person.

And they were told to divert their attention

to the big screens in front of them.

…because the time is now.

And, lo and behold…

…here is this inmate dressed in a fancy suit

and wearing a expensive-looking watch.

Thabo Bester dialling in from prison,

calling himself Tom Motsepe.

♪ Happy birthday, dear Tom ♪

♪ Happy birthday… ♪

A room filled with politicians, celebrities,

singing "Happy Birthday" to him.

That was sort of the cherry on the cake.

Because the response that we got from the public

was that it seemed as if he was actually laughing at them,

as opposed to being emotional by the crowd singing "Happy Birthday" to him.

You know, the tragedy of this is that

this man is highly, highly, highly intelligent.

But he is very, very dangerous.

Using the Internet, which has always been his major source of fraud,

whilst in prison.

How was it possible that Thabo Bester, who was a prisoner,

was able to run and manage a seemingly big company from within the prison?

And he was managing around 20 to 30 different employees.

All of their meetings with him was strictly online.

Because he was this businessman who was based in New York.

And it shows that he must have had connections

both outside and inside of prison to pull something like this off.

It is our belief that Dr Nandipha Magudumana

brought in the laptop for Thabo Bester to use.

According to the court application that Nandipha had filed,

Nandipha had paid just above 7,000 rand for Bester's studies,

and if you are a student while being an inmate,

you do have access to a laptop as well as the Internet.

It just places Nandipha as someone who was involved in this.

And she knew what was happening, because that was around the time

where the scam businesses like 21st Century Media were taking place.

Happy birthday, Chairman.

Surely Nandipha would have known that this is Thabo Bester

and at what point in time did she say,

"You know what? I know who and what this guy is and I'm okay with it."

And did that even happen?

So it seems that the relationship

between Bester and Magudumana

goes back to at least while he was in prison.

And that they've already been in business there.

When I rethink it over, it is 2018 when Thabo Bester

was coming in to her life.

Nandipha came to me and said,

"Hey, Bro. Wouldn't you like to work

for this global media platform and earn big bucks?"

I'm like, "Oh, why not?"

And then she says, "Okay. There's this, um, 'media tycoon' type of individual

who resides in New York City.

His name is TK Nkwana.

And he's gonna call you."

So TK calls me.

He name drops big names and sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

It's very convincing.

It was a done deal. "Nathi, you're getting this job."

He was introduced to be this prominent businessman

who is, you know, has multiple businesses, is doing well for himself.

So this is a voice note he… he sent me,

trying to ask me to assist him with a couple of things.

So, all you have to do is find somebody

that's interested in making a lot of money in a short space of time,

um, with government guarantees,

and basically bring them to the table

and we can find some leverage of working together.

So, the professionalism Nandipha spoke about

and, um, the intellectual property that she alluded about him

was something that one had also known.

We've got different sections of projects that we're doing

which is tenders, private investment projects.

We're bringing artists like Future, Drake, Beyoncé,

so we've got a lot of things that we can plug somebody.

There is a time, I'd say, I liked him.

'Cause he spoke with respect, uh, sort of showing love to the family.

Nandipha would say that,

"Do you know that TK grew up without parents or a family?"

He would call my mother "Mom".

And my dad, "Dad".

And my mother, being the soft person that she is, would say,

"Yeah, guys. Shame, poor TK, do you know that he really regards me as his mother?"

She sort of wanted a tight-knit type of empire in the family.

That's how my father also got involved, yeah, in their businesses.

I don't like to talk too much about that period.

It was a very, very strainful

and oppressing period in our lives.

I find myself not knowing whether to blame myself.

Why did I go to Johannesburg? I really…

Because there are so many criminals of high profile

around… This Sandton, especially.

I was afraid.

Nandipha had several companies registered in her name.

These companies varied from investments to, um, property,

as well as media production.

There was Vibes Africa, iMedia,

and then Arum Holdings.

Arum Properties claimed to be this property company

that specialised in developing luxury properties,

and Nandipha ended up making TK the chairman of Arum,

knowing very well that TK was Thabo Bester.

He was seen as, like, a partner that would be consistently consulted

or phoned into important meetings.

So he was basically running and managing businesses from within the prison.

But victims said that after they had paid deposits,

the most that they had gotten was a foundation.

There was just no progress in these projects,

and that's how these victims uncovered that they were essentially being scammed.

All right, so onto our exclusive story, now SABC News can reveal…

Dr Nandipha Magudumana

allegedly swindled a high-profile doctor of millions of rands…

She told me that she owns this media company.

They then promised that they can bring the likes of Oprah Winfrey.

And then I would go to her. We'll pray about it.

I would lit… call her and we'll pray about it.

I understand that you paid millions of rand.

I can confirm that, yes, it's millions.

Do you feel betrayed?

Betrayed… betrayed is an understatement.

Why?

Like, why? How could they do that? How can they lie to me?

Was she really bamboozled by Bester,

or did she run everything and decide to just ride the wave?

Ninety percent of the time, he was, um, on the phone with Nandipha.

Even when she was driving, she'd put the phone, block it off.

He's not even saying anything, but he's just watching.

You know.

I felt like there was a bit of control,

not wanting her to be around her family.

She… It was sort of "divide and conquer", you know what I mean?

He was dividing her from her family to keep her for himself.

It was either, Nandipha's very brave, or she was very naive and stupid.

Why is she playing along with this guy?

And I know that she's aware of who he is and where he is.

Why is she listening to this guy?

God, help me.

You know, I don't know

if I'm gonna do this whole sentence in here.

Or if they're gonna one day kill me.

I think, sometimes, you think to yourself you're dreaming.

'Cause it's so crazy.

And then…

…God said, "Get up."

"Get up and just try fight, bra."

I got up.

And I started fighting.

You find people that serve God.

You're a godly-given child, Nanz.

Thank you for being kind.

Thank you for loving those that are rejected sometimes, by the world.

I have no words. I have… I have no words.

I can definitely tell

how people would have been scammed by someone like this.

Because if I was Nandipha, I would not know

how to respond to something like that.

There he is, pretending to be a victim

and knowing full well that he was serving a life sentence

for rape and for murder.

This is a dangerous man.

Um…

honestly speaking about, like, the rape…

I think there was…

I think some part of me always wanted to feel

how it feels like to have a knife and to have somebody under your control.

It was never about stabbing anyone.

It was just scaring you and getting you to a corner where you can't do anything,

and felt useless and…

…say to you, "Shut up," and you know for a fact that there's nothing you can do.

It was very risky for even other victims

for someone like Thabo Bester to be on the escape.

I know there were a number of tracking and tracing teams that were put together

specifically and solely for Thabo's recapture.

Certain addresses were still monitored.

Dealerships were visited to find out if they haven't hired any other vehicle.

Dr Nandipha's cars, all of them, trackers were activated

to see who's driving the cars.

Police were on the lookout for the two musketeers.

I don't think Nandipha foresaw being caught,

and I don't think she understood the gravity of the situation

and what would happen to her after being caught by the police.

But for Thabo, this was definitely nothing new for him.

I was very concerned.

So I was glued to… to my phone and to the news.

A cash reward of 100,000 rand has now been offered

to anyone who might have crucial information.

Investigations are at a critical stage.

Our focus for now, as the SAPS,

is in apprehending this fugitive of justice,

as well as apprehend the accomplices.

I was just, uh, praying for the law to apprehend Bester,

which would automatically bring my sister in as well,

but she would be safe.

I was very, very worried about Bester doing something bad to Nandipha,

judging from his history of using a woman

and killing her afterwards.

Felt like, unfortunately, she will become a casualty.

Th-That was actually one of my greatest concerns,

because he's done it before.

I was worried because of this Thabo person,

that she might kill her.

It was not even alleged.

It was said he was convicted rapist and murderer.

And the voice notes of Thabo Bester threatening my sister

proved he was a nutcase, and he's a psychopath.

If I call you again,

and you don't pick up this phone,

and you fucking try and throw some stupid little fucking…

…"Where's the money, what, what, what"…

I will fucking squeeze you so hard, my sister,

you will regret the day you met me in your life.

So try me, I will break your face.

If I call you, and you don't pick up your phone,

you must know what's going to happen, sis'wam.

You know what's going to happen…

…because I have people watching you!

You fucking stupid woman!

You think I would leave you to walk the fucking street by yourself?

And I'm telling you now, if you ever block anything that has to do with me,

I will fucking tear you apart personally, with my own bare fucking hands,

even if it means I go back to jail.

Do you understand?

Do you hear me? Do you hear me?

I heard you.