BL Premium reports that former Constitutional Court judge Edwin Cameron told MPs on Thursday that the escape of murderer and serial rapist Thabo Bester from the Mangaung maximum security prison in May 2022 was not an isolated event but the culmination of institutional degradation and dysfunction at the facility.

The prison, under management of a private company G4S in terms of a public-private partnership contract, is now under a temporary manager appointed by the Department of Correctional Services. MPs were told the department has established there were several breaches of the contract in relation to the Bester escape compromising the security of the prison. The temporary manager replaced the G4S director of the prison on the grounds that G4S had lost control of the facility, but G4S management and staff remain in place. Costs for this will be claimed from G4S. The contract has been referred for legal advice to determine whether it can be terminated. Cameron, the inspecting judge of the Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services (JICS), appeared before parliament’s justice & correctional services committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Bester’s escape, which was covered up as an alleged suicide by fire. Cameron said Mangaung was a model prison from a structural point of view “but beneath that there is functionality that is rotten”. He advised: “Thabo Bester was not a rare event. It is symptomatic of the degradation of institutional authority, organisational cohesion and management control. That could not have occurred without a significant degradation of almost every organisational and control function that you should have in a prison.”

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Linda Ensor at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page