Cape Town – Lawyers for Thabo Bester and Nandipha Magudumana were in court on Friday arguing against the imminent broadcast of a Showmax docuseries Tracking Thabo Bester.
Magudamana’s lawyer today told the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg that while Magudamana was not opposed in principle to the documentary, she wanted to see it before it was aired, News24 reports.
Magudamana, who is in prison in Kroonstad awaiting trial for her alleged part in Bester’s daring escape from a Manguang prison in 2022, and Bester have both filed urgent interdicts to stop Showmax from airing the documentary on Friday evening.
“I am not against the respondents broadcasting the documentary. In fact, I am very much interested in it and will watch it when released and/or broadcasted,” Magudamana argues in her papers
“However, I am against the documentary being broadcasted before I have seen it, more specifically before the end of my trial as I believe it will have an impact on my trial and the subsequent result.
“I contend that even though the respondents see my life as non-valuable and my name as ‘plainly a matter of public interest’, l am, however, still human and am entitled to be treated with respect and dignity to which I deserve. By their conduct, [Showmax and Multichoice] have already prosecuted and punished me before my actual trial even begins.”
Bester argues in his application: “It is unfair that I should have to fight a trial in court and a public trial which influences my treatment and attitudes toward me, before I have even had an opportunity to respond. This is especially true because the sources of the documentary will form the state’s evidence in the trial yet to be determined,”
Steven Budlender, the lawyer for Multichoice, which owns Showmax, argued that the documentary would not jeopardise the trial as it was based “on notorious facts” about Bester “which are all already in the public domain and have been the subject of widespread reportage in the media”.
“The documentary draws on a wide range of publicly available source material, including consultation with the journalists who first broke the story. The documentary also reports on various matters concerning the functioning of government institutions and societal issues relating to the crimes for which the applicant was convicted.”
Budlender argued that Bester was “aggrieved that he has not profited from the production of Showmax’s documentary”.
“He wishes to protect only this pecuniary interest in this application,” he said.
IOL reports that the documentary features interviews with GroundUp journalists Marecia Damons and Daniel Steyn, prisoners and prison warders at the Mangaung Correctional Centre and the family of Katlego Bereng Mpholo, the man whose burnt body was found in Cell 35, the cell Bester occupied whie in prison.
Damons and Steyn tracked down Bester to Magudumana’s Johannesburg home in April 2023, almost a year after he escaped from the Manguang prison, where he was serving a life sentence for rape and murder
It is alleged that Bester escaped with the help of Magudumana and prison officials by faking his own death in his prison cell before being smuggled out. Bester and Magudumana were eventually apprehended in Tanzania.
The nine accused face 16 charges between them, including fraud, corruption, assisting an inmate escape and the violation of dead bodies. Bester, Magudumana and Magudumana’s former gardener, Zanda Moyo, remain in custody and other accused are on bail.
The case has been postponed until 5 June 2024.
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