One of South Africa’s most notorious rapists and murderers, Thabo Bester, has sued to stop Netflix from airing a documentary about his life, including how he allegedly faked his death and escaped from prison.
The BBC writes about this.
His lawyers claimed that Beauty and the Beast was defamatory, but the streaming platform defended its plan to release a three-part investigation.
The documentary features Bester’s partner, renowned doctor Nandifa Magudumana, who allegedly helped him escape. She is also involved in a lawsuit trying to stop the film’s release.
The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its decision approximately 30 minutes before the documentary is scheduled to be released to a global audience on September 12.
Bester was convicted in 2012 of raping and murdering his model girlfriend, Nomfundo Tykhulu. A year earlier, he was found guilty of raping and robbing two other women.
Bester became known as the “Facebook Rapist” for using the social network to lure his victims.
He was serving a life sentence when he is believed to have escaped from a maximum security prison in 2022. A fire broke out at the prison, during which authorities discovered a charred body they believed to be Bester’s. However, it turned out to be someone else.
Undetected for a year, Bester then allegedly lived under an alias in the South African city of Johannesburg, where he was assisted by his partner.
The couple were arrested in hiding in Tanzania in April 2023 and deported. They are currently in custody awaiting trial on several charges, including indecency with a corpse, perverting the course of justice, and fraud. They have not yet pleaded guilty to the charges.
Bester’s lawyer said the documentary violates the criminal’s right to a fair trial.
“There is no evidence that he escaped. He has not yet been convicted of this. There are many reasons why a person is no longer in prison, such as parole. The documentary is a courthouse,” Moafrica Wa Maila told the court.
The lawyer also claimed that the very title of the documentary was deliberately crafted to portray his client as a “beast.”
Netflix’s legal representative, lawyer Thembeka Ngkukaitobi, told the court that the three-part series gives the victims a platform they haven’t had in a long time.
“This documentary gives the victims of Thabo Bester a platform to be heard after years of silence. Banning the film means silencing them again,” the media quoted the lawyer as saying.
Judge Sulet Potterill asked Netflix when the company intended to release the documentary and said she would make her decision shortly before then.
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