Africa-Press – South-Africa. Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has been joined as a respondent in Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s challenge to what she says was her “abduction” by SA police in Tanzania – meaning he’ll be able to submit evidence about what he insists was a lawful deportation.
Magudumana and her boyfriend, rapist and killer Thabo Bester, were detained in Tanzania where they had gone on the run after confirmation of GroundUp’s reports that Bester had faked his death and escaped from maximum-security Mangaung Correctional Centre in May 2022.
Magudumana’s urgent application in the Free State High Court in Bloemfontein, in which she seeks to have her arrest and subsequent detention declared unlawful and set aside, has now been postponed to Thursday.
Her advocate, Stanley Reinders, SC, said it was postponed to allow the National Prosecuting Authority and SA Police Service to file a response to Magudumana’s application, which she would then reply to. Those responses are expected to be filed by the end of Friday.
Reinders added that the parties in the matter had agreed that Motsoaledi could be joined as a respondent in the case and would file an affidavit about the matter, should his department wish to do so, by 16:30 on Monday.
At a press conference on Monday, Motsoaledi said Magudumana and Bester had been “declared prohibited immigrants in terms of the immigration laws of Tanzania and were therefore, as a matter of law, liable to be deported back to their country of origin”.
He then read from a document that he identified as a “notice to prohibit immigrant, Dr Nandipha Magudumana”.
It stated: “You are an unlawful person within the United Republic of Tanzania. You are hereby ordered to leave Tanzania within three days.”
Magudumana’s lawyers maintain, however, that she was never shown this document, nor was she given three days to consider her options.
Motsoaledi further insisted that Magudumana and Bester were handed over to the SA High Commissioner in Tanzania and immigration officials – specifically because Tanzanian authorities refused to hand them over to SA police.
He said:
“They said they’ll only give them over to immigration officials.”
Impeccably placed sources who have direct knowledge of Magudumana’s litigation say her lawyers are adamant that there is “no provision” in law that enables the kind of “handover” described by Motsoaledi – and further contend that immigration officials do not have the legal power to receive citizens in the way the minister described.
Magudumana, who has been accused of perjury for false claims she made under oath in her failed efforts to claim the body Bester had used to fake his death, also insists that she was “abducted” by SA Police Service officials in Tanzania.
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