Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says the R1.4 million spent on bringing fugitives Thabo Bester and his ‘customary wife’ Nandipha Magudumana back to South Africa was shared among the departments involved in the matter.
Cape Town - Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says the R1.4 million spent on bringing fugitives Thabo Bester and his “customary wife” Nandipha Magudumana back to South Africa was shared among the departments involved in the matter.
The government came under fire after reports surfaced that the chartered flight was luxurious and the public felt they should have used a police or an army aircraft.
Briefing the home affairs portfolio committee, Motsoaledi said the plane that went to Tanzania to fetch Bester and Magudumana was not hired by SAPS but by his department.
He said the Tanzanians had opted for the deportation of Bester and Magudumana rather than extradition.
At the time the government had sent a team from law enforcement agencies – the SAPS, Department of Correctional Services and the State Security Agency plus an official from the Home Affairs Department – to fetch the fugitives.
Motsoaledi said their counterparts had wanted to hand over Bester to the country’s immigration officials.
“When a person is deported to their country of origin, they are handed only to immigration officials of that country, not any other authorities. The Tanzanians said they are not prepared to hand over Thabo Bester to the police," he said.
“We don’t have airplanes like the police and the army. Our only option was to fly commercial and we found that we needed to fly a team of 14 people overall,” Motsoaledi said.
He said they had looked at the logistics of flying 14 people to Dar es Salaam and hiring a minibus to travel about 660km to where Bester and Magudumana were held.
“We decided to use the method we use when we deport our own people from Lindela (Repatriation Centre) to other countries,” he said.
Buses are hired when illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries are deported and chartered flights are used for those from faraway counties.
Motsoaledi said they wanted a chartered flight that was to be able to have landing rights and all documentation on their own without the help of the state in less than 24 hours.
“The one we took was the cheapest at R1.4m. We never wanted a luxury flight as everybody is saying,” he said.
“It is the cheapest flight we got as one of those who responded to our request for a proposal that we wanted who could do that.
“That is why 14 people got in and came back,” the minister added.
“The one we took was the cheapest at R1.4m. We never wanted a luxury flight as everybody is saying,” he said.
Motsoaledi also said it was not a small matter why the Tanzanians refused to hand over Bester to the SAPS as doing so would have been called rendition.
“Tanzanians said under no conditions would they want to be blamed or accused of rendition so they can’t hand Thabo Bester and Nandipha over, whether to the army or police, or why they could not use their transport mode.
“That is why they insisted that Home Affairs must find a mode of transport and transport them.”
The minister recalled an incident about a decade ago when the Hawks allegedly handed suspected Zimbabwean criminals to the country’s police instead of the immigration officials.
“That is why we had to do what we did.”
IFP MP Liezel van der Merwe said she was shocked that the department spent R1.4m to fetch the fugitives because they as the portfolio knew of their budget limitations and constraints.
“Why would you need 14 people to repatriate two individuals?” Van der Merwe asked, adding that it would have cost R100 000 to fly each person on the chartered flight and would be far cheaper on the commercial flight to Tanzania and travel by road to where the pair were held.
“Will you engage the Department of Justice and Department of Correctional Services to get some of the money back and even G4S?” she said.
Motsoaledi said he accepted that the officials could have been flown there and then hired a bus for them.
He asked which commercial flight would have accepted the pair in handcuffs to make sure that they did not run away and how passengers would have reacted.
“I don’t remember a situation where thugs of this nature have to be flown around the world in commercial aircraft. We never deported anybody via commercial aircraft,” he said.
“No aircraft would like to damage their reputation. This was the best possible way.”
He also said had they saved money and something had gone wrong, they would have been held accountable.
Motsoaledi confirmed that the cost for the chartered flight was shared between the departments.
Cape Times
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