Dr Nandipha Magudumana suffered a major setback when her urgent application to challenge her arrest in Tanzania on the grounds that it was “unlawful” was dismissed on Monday. Judge Phillip Loubser of the High Court in Bloemfontein not only rejected Dr Magudumana’s application to declare her arrest illegal but ordered her to pay the costs.

By Staff Reporter

The high court in Bloemfontein dismissed Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s urgent court application on Monday morning, which sought to have her arrest and detention declared “wrongful and unlawful”.

Magudumana, who is currently held at the Bizzah Makhate Correctional Centre in Kroonstad, had filed a legal challenge against her detention after being arrested in Arusha on 6 April. She claimed that the police had “abducted” her.

Last week Thursday, Advocate Anton Katz SC, Magudumana’s legal counsel, argued in court that her deportation from Tanzania was an extradition that was being disguised and that there was collusion between the authorities of South Africa and Tanzania.

Judge Phillip Loubser, who delivered the verdict, stated that Magudumana’s arrest was not unlawful since she had consented to return to South Africa from Tanzania.

“In the present case, I have no hesitation in finding that the applicant was well aware at the time of her handing over of the charges that could be levelled against her upon her arrival in South Africa. She nevertheless consented to her removal from Tanzania to South Africa because she wanted to be with her children.

“At the very least she had willingly acquiesced to her transportation back to South Africa. Based on the decision of the Appellate Division in the cases of December and Mohala, to which I have referred and which cases I am bound to follow, I, therefore, find that the application cannot succeed and make the following orders: the application is dismissed with costs, including the costs of two counsel who were so employed respectively the first to third respondents and the sixth respondent,”  ruled Judge Loubser.

Magudumana, Thabo Bester, and their fellow defendants are scheduled to appear in court for their criminal trial on June 20 in Bloemfontein. Bester, who has been convicted of murder and rape, is currently being held at Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in Pretoria.

Bester is accused of escaping from Mangaung Correctional Centre in May 2022 by faking his death in his cell.

Magudumana, Bester’s lover, is facing charges of fraud, corruption, violating a body, and intentionally harbouring and concealing an escaped offender.