Johannesburg - The judgment in Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s urgent application to declare her arrest and deportation unlawful will be delivered on Monday.
Magudumana, the girlfriend of convicted killer and rapist Thabo Bester, said in her affidavit that she was not deported from Tanzania, but abducted. The pair fled South Africa after news about Bester’s escape broke.
Bester escaped from the Mangaung Correctional Facility in May last year. It has emerged that he was aided in his escape, and Magudumana is one of the suspects arrested for assisting him. He was a fugitive and was captured in Arusha, Tanzania, in the company of Magudumana and a Mozambican national.
The matter was heard at the Free State High Court yesterday, and the case attracted a large contingent of local and international media, civil society and political parties.
Magudumana wants her charges withdrawn; she claimed that she was held against her will in Tanzania, where she was arrested in April this year.
After listening to arguments from Magudumana’s legal team and the State, Free State High Court Judge Phillip Loubser said that judgment would be made on June 5. “I don’t intend to take weeks; I intend to deliver judgment in this matter this coming Monday at 10am in this very same court,” said Judge Loubser.
The State made it clear that it wanted the matter dismissed with costs.
In her quest for freedom, Magudumana hired top international advocate Anton Katz SC, who wasted no time in stamping his authority by homing in on what he said was a disguised extradition. However, the State said the accused was declared by the host country, Tanzania, to be unlawfully in the country.
Katz said that the eight-member delegation that went to Tanzania on April 9 was deliberating on the deportation of Magudumana and Bester. He said they were only there to identify the people, but that was not the case because the pair were then deported back to South Africa. “This was not a deportation; it was actually a disguised unlawful extradition,” said Katz.
Home Affairs, cited as the sixth respondent, dismissed the abduction claim and insisted that all processes to bring her back to South Africa were followed, and she was arrested once she landed in the country.
Advocate Petrus Joubert Zietsman for Home Affairs said the decision to deport Magudumana back to South Africa was taken by the Tanzanian authorities.
He referred to the notice from Tanzania declaring Magudumana and Bester were in the country illegally.
The Star