{"id":256436,"date":"2023-04-04T16:43:32","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T14:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show\/"},"modified":"2023-04-04T16:43:32","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T14:43:32","slug":"parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Parliamentary briefing on Thabo Bester postponed after G4S no-show"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/parliament-6048hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Members of Parliament were united in their outrage against G4S on Tuesday. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tuesday\u2019s parliamentary briefing on the escape of Thabo Bester was postponed after security company G4S did not attend.<\/li>\n<li>Bester was serving a life sentence at the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein at the time of his escape on 3 May 2022. The prison was managed by G4S.<\/li>\n<li>G4S, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), the South African Police Service (SAPS), and the Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services (JICS) were set to present updates on their investigations on Tuesday.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Tuesday\u2019s parliamentary briefing on the escape of rapist and murderer Thabo Bester from Mangaung Correctional Centre was unable to proceed when security company G4S, which operates the prison, declined to appear. Bester escaped from prison on 3 May 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Correctional Services had invited G4S, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), the South African Police Service (SAPS), and the Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services (JICS) to present updates on their investigations and answer questions from MPs.<\/p>\n<p>But on Monday G4S wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1d8mO0FlyDDF0VMxPTzoh5Y91zEd3GIft\/view?usp=drivesdk\">letter<\/a> to the committee chair, Gratitude Magwanishe, saying it would not present to the committee because of contractual and statutory confidentiality clauses. The letter said that G4S would appear only if summonsed by the committee.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola, Inspecting Judge Edwin Cameron, Deputy Police Minister Cassel Mathale and the national commissioners of Police and Correctional Services were present at the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Committee members expressed their disappointment with G4S and said that G4S had disrespected the committee. The committee resolved that the meeting be postponed and G4S be summonsed to appear before the committee as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccountability to Parliament is not optional. That is what they must know,\u201d said Magwanishe. \u201cWe thought that we were going to have an open, honest discussion about what has happened. All stakeholders are here except them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DA MP Glynis Breytenbach said she was struggling to \u201ccontain her outrage\u201d that a year after Bester\u2019s escape, little had been done.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[The absence of G4S] makes a mockery of this procedure,\u201d Breytenbach said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey thumb their nose at a committee of parliament and \u2026 demand to be summoned here, in order to obtain some sort of flimsy protection. For what? It\u2019s very clear they have something to hide. If they had nothing to hide they would\u2019ve been here,\u201d said Breytenbach.<\/p>\n<p>ANC MP Nomathemba Maseko-Jele expressed fear, on behalf of Bester\u2019s victims, and anger. \u201c[Bester\u2019s actions] must be weighed more than the rights of this institution [G4S],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>ANC MP Anthea Ramolobeng called the situation a \u201cnational crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe escape of Thabo Bester has angered a lot of women. A rapist is out on the loose. We have no idea if he is still in the country,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Legal representatives for G4S were present at the meeting. Advocate Ben Winks, instructed by G4S\u2019 attorneys, told the committee that he was on a \u201climited mandate\u201d. He said the invitation to the hearing had only reached G4S, via its subsidiary Bloemfontein Correctional Contracts, on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The committee had invited DCS, which had then extended invitations to G4S.<\/p>\n<p>MPs asked why G4S sent legal representatives though they declined to make a presentation. DA MP Steven Swart suggested they were there on a watching brief to study the line of questioning MPs had prepared. Therefore, Swart said, the proceeding would be prejudiced if it continued without G4S\u2019s presentation to the committee.<\/p>\n<p>After the committee was adjourned, EFF MP Vusi Khoza exclaimed: \u201cThey can run but they cannot hide!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members of Parliament were united in their outrage against G4S on Tuesday. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks Tuesday\u2019s parliamentary briefing on the escape of Thabo Bester was postponed after security company G4S did not attend. Bester was serving a life sentence at the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein at the time of his escape on 3 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-256436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/parliamentary-briefing-on-thabo-bester-postponed-after-g4s-no-show.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}