16 June 2026
Mangaung Correctional Centre from which Thabo Bester escaped in May 2022. Archive photo: Becker Semela
The Minister and the National Commissioner of Correctional Services have been ordered to repay at least R1.7-million to the company that runs the private, maximum-security Mangaung Correctional Centre, from which rapist and murderer Thabo Bester escaped in May 2022.
The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria found that the department had no right to take control of the prison, ten months after Bester’s escape.
Acting Judge DM Hinrichsen said the national commissioner had possibly acted with “improper purpose” because of the heightened media attention about the “embarrassing” escape.
The prison is a public-private partnership with Bloemfontein Correctional Contracts (BCC), a consortium partly owned by multinational security company G4S (previously known as Group 4).
G4S Correctional Services has, since 2000, had a contract with BCC to operate the prison.
In May 2022, Bester, who was serving a life sentence, allegedly bribed G4S officials to fake his suicide by sneaking a dead body into his prison cell and setting it alight. He escaped dressed in a prison guard uniform.
G4S reported Bester’s death as a suicide. It later emerged through DNA testing that the body in the cell was not his.
It was only in November 2022 that the department concluded that Bester had escaped. G4S was fined R880,000 for the escape, as per the contract. Later that month, GroundUp published an article raising questions about Bester’s supposed death.
It was another two months before the department reported Bester’s escape to the police.
Having received further information and investigated the issue, GroundUp published an expose in March 2023, with compelling evidence that Bester had escaped.
On 25 March, the department publicly admitted that Bester had escaped and put together a team to track and trace the fugitive.
On 30 March, National Commissioner Makgothi Pathekile invoked Section 112 of the Correctional Services Act to temporarily take control of the prison
Between 28 March and 31 July 2023, the department claimed R1.72-million in credits from BCC for the cost of running the prison. The company paid the credits “under protest” and headed to court, seeking to set aside the Section 112 decision and to be repaid its credits.
In his recent judgment, Judge Hinrechsen said the respondents – the minister and the commissioner – had largely raised technical defences to the application, all of which had no merit.
He said section 112 gave the commissioner emergency powers if the director of a prison in a public-private partnership “had lost effective control and if it was necessary in the interests of safety and security, to take back control”.
Judge Hinrichsen said it was an “extraordinary power … to be invoked sparingly”.
On 28 March 2023, the National Commissioner had prepared a memorandum to the minister, which “canvassed at length the narrative of the escape, the subsequent investigation and the steps taken thereafter”, said the judge.
“It did not identify a present threat to safety and security,” said the judge. All parties agreed that, as of March 2023, the facility was operating properly. There was no security threat. Bester had escaped ten months prior, which meant invoking section 112 was not legally permissible, said Judge Hinrechsen.
There was also no evidence that the commissioner had consulted with the minister, as is required by the Act.
“He submitted an opinion he had already formed to the minister for a signature. The distinction is not semantic. The minister signed the document on the same day. There is no evidence of any deliberation, discussion, modification or back and forth between them.”
“The record also contains several indications that the decision was taken for an ulterior purpose,” Judge Hinrichsen said, referring to the fact that the DCS had described Bester’s escape as an “embarrassing incident” in its media statement.
“The humiliation of the State caused by the escape is a consideration that cannot be lawfully brought to bear in the exercise of the section 112 power.”
The commissioner’s own investigation team had, in November 2022, recommended that penalties be imposed, but not that section 112 be invoked.
“That assessment prevailed for some four months. It was overtaken in March 2023 against the backdrop of intensifying media scrutiny and by a decision in which the department sought to be seen to be acting decisively.”
He said there had been no recent escapes, the penalty had been paid, and G4S had dismissed nine implicated employees.
“The decision was one that no reasonable decision-maker could have taken on the material before the commissioner,” the judge said, setting it aside.
He ordered that all “credits” paid by BCC be repaid and that the respondents pay the costs of the application.
The 25-year contract between BCC and the department started on 30 June 2001 and is due to expire at the end of June this year. The department previously decided to terminate the contract earlier but that decision was challenged in a separate court case, which has not yet been resolved.
