Prisons for Profit and the Cooldrink

In the wake of the Thabo Bester saga pundits have waxed lyrical on, inter alia, a corrupt security cluster as well as the inherent poisoned chalice of roping in the private sector to do government bidding. But for many South Africans, these tended to eschew the next everyday and uncomplicated footfall that is – even amongst petty drug pushers – colloquially known as “the cooldrink.”

In saner places a cooldrink is no more than a carbonated beverage. In South Africa it is a loaded euphemism with equally colourful terminology connoting anything from extortion to bribery; you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours, you know – wink, wink. It is a reliable diversion out of tight situations with law enforcement, a means to get bumped up the queue at the clinic or to spirit away a damning docket from the police station. Depending on the quantity of the cooldrink, it has been known to work effectively almost every time.

Bester must’ve done a lot of winking and smuggled truckloads of cooldrink since his conviction for rape and murder at Mangaung Correctional Centre in 2012.

The man who is dubbed The Facebook Rapist almost got away with single-handedly outwitting as well as laying bare the rot that continues to gnaw away at whatever still remains of the integrity of the country’s most critical institutions. Though one is tempted to put blame squarely at the feet of the big fish, truth is, corruption is so endemic in our society that even the small fry can – and do – make a lucrative side hustle out of it.

It is by no means coincidental that prison officials, often underpaid and exposed to rough working situations, were among the first entangled in Bester’s elaborate web of deceit. 

When he should’ve otherwise been in a prison onesie, Bester would appear – dapper in a waistcoat and tie – on a big screen to address attendees at the launch of 21st Century Media held at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton in 2018. The guest list which included prominent socialites were none the wiser that the man they were listening and singing happy birthday to was not, as they understood, in New York, but locked up in cell 35 of a Bloemfontein prison. The bogus company which Bester ran from prison would’ve ensured more cooldrink, certainly no complaints on the part of his warders, and he would be unencumbered in finding willing co-conspirators to effect his daring escape. 

Why and how anybody would so brazenly go through the trouble of secreting a cadaver into a maximum security facility and set it alight goes to show the shocking depths to which those entrusted to shore up the system would sink to for a cooldrink. One would go so far as to say that in the absence of the colossal media attention and Bester’s partner in the form of celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana that SA would hardly have been as immersed in the story. In and of themselves prison escapes are nothing new. A long trail of them dogs the correctional services department.

In 2006 serial offender Ananias Mathe escaped from Pretoria’s C Max Prison by supposedly smearing himself with Vaseline and wriggling his way through the bars. Of course this was later proved ludicrous; members of Mathe’s Mozambique-based gang had simply forked out a R80 000 cooldrink to warders. In an escape that sounds like something straight out of The Shawshank Redemption, Thabo Zacharia Muyambo and Johannes Chauke made their way out of the Kgosi Mapuru II prison through a hole made in the wall of their cell in 2020. Zimbabwean Bongani Moyo had made his second escape from the same prison eight years earlier. 

What the Bester case sheds the spotlight on is how ethics are a negligible secondary concern in the face of money. Receipts produced by the Sunday Times show how during his incarceration Bester and Magudumana were often spending weekends at a hotel in Bloemfontein. Yes, let that sink in – Bester was being let in and out of prison as he so desired. A few prison documentaries speak not only to how this is common practice but to how officials often use prisoners to commit crimes on the outside as their imprisonment offers a watertight alibi. 

In the midst of all the Bester drama Judge Edwin Cameron (the inspecting judge for the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services), has come out to say “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.” Apart from the cooldrink, the retired Judge Cameron points us to another spanner in the institutional works; that of a tendency for officials to drag their feet. As late as October last year, Cameron says he had informed the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola of Bester’s escape. However because there were several investigations being conducted on the same matter, these were grinding on very slowly.

Frustrated, Judge Cameron then leaked the information to the media and through the stellar work of the journalists at GroundUp, arguably the biggest story of the year broke.

Meanwhile out there, thousands of untrained drivers cruise the streets on cooldrink-backed licences. Some are being pulled over for one road infraction or another right now, but, having furnished more cooldrink, are soon sent on their merry way. According to reports, Bester went by several aliases complete with the collaborative identity documents. Not sure about you but this smells – as the home affairs department has been often accused of corruption – like a lot of cooldrinks could have gone the way of that department. 

These would have ostensibly come in very handy when Bester and his accomplices crossed various borders up to Tanzania where they were eventually arrested. Now a parliamentary inquiry and criminal case is underway, bent on ensuring that the accused face the music. Some damning findings will inevitably come up. A few people will be shown the door out of employment, others the door to a prison cell. But in all the platitudes and political grandstanding, at that moment someone in the country will be getting away with assault, drug trafficking, even murder, only because they are aware of the common tongue which really has two magic words; a cooldrink. And therein, to paraphrase The Bard, lies the rub.

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