Home Affairs confirms Thabo Bester birth records, but no ID
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says after interviewing Thabo Bester’s mother, his department was able to establish that he was born in a South African hospital.
Motsoaledi held a press briefing in Tshwane on Friday to elaborate on the home affairs aspect of the escape saga involving Bester and his alleged accomplice Nandipha Magudumana.
This comes after it emerged in Parliament, during the portfolio committee on justice’s grilling of top officials from the correctional services department and the police, that there’s no record of an ID number for Bester.
This is despite his 2012 conviction and subsequent life sentence.
Motsoaledi says officials “struggled” to establish the now rearrested fugitive’s identity after running both the Thabo Bester and Thapelo Nkwana names through the population register – and other available databases for non-South Africans in the country.
The minister says they approached Meisie Mabaso after seeing her in the media.
“She insisted that she is the mother of Thabo Bester, she even gave us his date of birth and told us that she gave birth to this gentleman at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital on 13 June 1986. We rushed to Bara Hospital and checked in their archives, and what this lady told is true.”
WATCH: Thabo Bester 'fears for his life' in prison
Motsoaledi further revealed that Bester’s mother herself did not have an ID number at the time of his birth and only managed to attain one in 2002, using her aunt’s last name.
Further checks confirmed Bester was registered at a school in the south of Johannesburg in 1997, but stopped schooling in 2002 when he was in grade 5.
“Thabo went up to grade 5. There’s no other record that he went to any other grade since then because he disappeared from the school. But it looks like from the mother he disappeared in 2006,” Motsoaledi added.
It’s alleged Mabaso had no contact with her son until his arrest in 2011.
WATCH: Motsoaledi says even though it’s been flagged that #ThaboBester has no ID, and even after his department satisfied itself that he is a South African citizen, he can’t force Bester to have an ID. Motsoaledi theorized that Bester deliberately remained unregistered pic.twitter.com/g75zCoowly
— Jacaranda News (@JacaNews) April 14, 2023
TOM WILLIAMS KELLY – BESTER’S AMERICAN PASSPORT
Motsoaledi disclosed that at the time of his arrest in Tanzania, along with Magudumana and a third suspect, Bester was found to be in possession of an American passport.
He stressed that because Bester never passed through the Home Affairs system, no document was ever issued in his name.
“There’s a story that he has multiple passports, Thabo doesn’t have any passport with Home Affairs. The passport he was found carrying in Tanzania appears to be an American passport, in the name of Tom Williams Kelly.”
Motsoaledi said his department cannot prove the authenticity of the passport and called on his American counterparts to assist.
