Thabo Bester escape: no reason for bail to be granted, says prosecutor:
The accused in the Thabo Bester case appearing in court on Tuesday had not submitted sufficient evidence for bail to be granted, Prosecutor Sello Matlhoko said.
The bail hearing of five of the eight accused resumed in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court, with lawyers making closing arguments in favour of bail.
The criminal trial is set to begin on 20 June. Bester and his partner Nandipha Magudumana have withdrawn their bail applications. Magudumana’s father, Zolile Sekeleni, is already out on bail.
Matlhoko argued that, except for Natassja Jansen who faces lesser charges, it was up to the accused to provide evidence that “the interest of justice will be served by them being released on bail”. He said that the evidence submitted by the accused, via their affidavits, did not suffice.
He was responding to closing arguments by lawyers for the accused.
Advocate Kagisho Moruri, representing former G4S employee Senohe Matsoara, said that if the investigations took another month to complete, Matsoara would have been in custody for over three months. This, he argued, would not be in the interest of justice.
Moruri also argued that the testimony of investigating officer Tieho Flyman, did not show that, should he be released on bail, Matsoara would interfere with the investigation or undermine the justice system. Nor, he said, would he disturb the public order.
Moruri emphasised Matsoara’s right to be presumed innocent and said that Matsoara did not have any previous convictions, was not prone to violence, was a South African citizen by birth and had a fixed address.
“The state does not have a ‘watertight’ case against the client,” said Moruri.
Makhotsa was also represented by Moruri. He said the investigating officer had not suggested that Moruri would commit another offence. He also said that it would be difficult for Makhotsa, and Matsoara, who both have pending labour disputes with G4S in the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), to pursue those disputes and instruct their attorneys while in custody.
Teboho Lipholo, an employee at Integritron Security Solutions and the CCTV camera technician who is accused of disconnecting power to the cameras on the night of the escape, was represented by Advocate Tshotlego Makamedi. Makamedi said Lipholo did not have enough blankets at the detention centre, had contracted flu, and had not been treated.
If Lipholo was not released on bail, Makamedi said, he would not be able to instruct his lawyer properly and would not be able to find witnesses to prepare his defence. He himself could not travel to Lipholo’s place of detention, he said. Makamedi is employed by LegalAid. He said that Lipholo is indigent.
Lipholo has cooperated with the police and there is no evidence that he will evade trial, Makamedi argued.
Lawyer Masile Koenane, representing G4S employee Motenyani Masukela, said there is “no direct evidence” that Masukela will interfere with the investigation or intimidate witnesses. He said Masukela, married with four children, “is a breadwinner in his household”.
“He is a man that needs to go back and work for his family,” Koenane told the court. “It could take a long time for this matter to be finalised.”
He suggested that the state’s case is too weak to guarantee a conviction.
Representing former G4S employee Jansen, lawyer Gary Botha said there was no evidence that Jansen assisted Thabo Bester to escape from prison and that she had only done her job on the night of the escape. “My client has been criminally charged with reporting for duty,” Botha said.
Botha said that the case could take some time, that there was no risk that Jansen would interfere with the investigation and that she had two children.
Prosecutor Matlhoko gave a detailed account of the night of the escape and how a corpse, believed by the state to be that of Katlego Bereng, was driven into the prison in a TV cabinet. At this point, Bereng’s mother, who was seated in the gallery, broke down crying.
He said releasing the accused on bail would undermine community trust in the police and the justice system. “The people employed to guard and make sure [Thabo Bester] remains behind bars for the rest of his life are the same people who assisted him in the escape,” Matlhoko said.
The accused will remain in custody until Wednesday morning, when the hearing continues.
This article was first published by GroundUp.
Google expands flood alerts to more African countries:
Google announced the expansion of its Flood Hub platform to cover 80 countries worldwide, including the addition of eight new countries in Africa. To date, 23 African countries are on the Flood Hub. This expansion comes as part of AI-enabled efforts to address the devastating impacts of floods and provide critical support to vulnerable communities.
The Flood Hub platform offers forecasts up to seven days in advance, benefiting 460 million people globally.
Before it was extended, the Flood Hub platform was available in African countries including Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and South Africa. The new countries include Burundi, Eswatini, Guinea Bissau, Lesotho, Madagascar, Rwanda, Senegal and Zimbabwe.
The inclusion of these countries ensures that a broader range of African communities facing high flood risk and extreme weather conditions can benefit from Flood Hub’s forecasting services.
Floods claim tens of thousands of lives and cause billions in damage across the world each year. Their effects are particularly severe in low-resource regions that often lack effective early-warning systems.
In addition, Google is expanding flood alerts through search and map notifications, ensuring that individuals have convenient access to timely and critical flood information.
“We recognise the significant impact that floods have on communities worldwide, especially in regions with limited resources and vulnerable populations,” said Yossi Mattias, vice president of engineering and research and crisis response lead. “We are committed to expanding the reach of the Flood Hub platform to support these communities and provide accurate flood forecasting that can help save lives and protect livelihoods.”
Since 2019, nonprofit organisations have been working with Google.org to establish offline alerting networks because of the limited access to cellphones and the internet in some communities. These networks are designed to leverage trained community volunteers who play a crucial role in amplifying the reach of Flood Hub’s warnings. As a result, even individuals without digital connectivity are able to receive life-saving flood alerts.
UP experts join expert group to help address climate change and sustainable development:
Urgent rescue efforts are needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming
Two experts affiliated with the University of Pretoria (UP) — Dr Heide Hackmann, Director at UP’s Future Africa Institute, and Dr Tolullah Oni, Extraordinary Professor and Chair at Innovation Africa@UP — have joined an international group of 14 experts co-convened by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
UN Expert Groups (EGs) are made up of experts from diverse fields and countries drawn from academia, civil society, international organisations, business and other sectors.
This Expert Group has been tasked with preparing a report that will build an evidence base to showcase how tackling the challenges of climate change and sustainable development together can lead to a positive outcome that benefits both causes and maximises impact. Synergies between the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and climate can be found across all 17 SDG goals.
The report was requested following a recommendation of the Third Global Conference on Strengthening Synergies between the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2022. Recent UN reports on SDGs and climate change pointed out that urgent rescue efforts are needed to make a course correction to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. The Covid-19 pandemic and other global crises have also slowed down or reversed decades of development progress that had been made.
The UN DESA and UNFCCC announcement was made on 15 May 2023 and established that Dr Hackmann will co-lead the Expert Group on Climate and SDG Synergies, and Dr Oni will contribute her expertise as one of the group’s experts.
“It is an honour to be co-leading this work, which should contribute to accelerating progress on achieving the SDGs. Synergistic action is imperative for the future. How best to advance it is the difficult question this Expert Panel now needs to advise on,” Dr Hackmann said.
The initial report from this expert group will be presented in September 2023 on the margins of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Summit and the Climate Ambition Summit being convened by the UN Secretary-General in support of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This meeting will mark the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
For more information visit:
Climate and SDG Synergies website: https://sdgs.un.org/climate-sdgs-synergies
Official UN Announcement about Expert group: https://sdgs.un.org/blog/expert-group-prepare-report-analysing-climate-and-sdg-synergies-aiming-maximize-action-impac
About Future Africa
Future Africa is the University of Pretoria’s collaborative platform for transformative research that works across the sciences and with society to address Africa’s biggest and most urgent contemporary challenges.
Website: www.futureafrica.science | Twitter: @FutureAfricaUP | Facebook: Future Africa
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