Author: The Free Stater

A STRIKE action by Matjhabeng Local Municipality workers over unpaid wages threatened to degenerate into violence last Thursday as the protestors started burning tyres and garbage outside the municipal head office. Employees at the municipality – which oversees the towns of Welkom, Virginia, Odendaalsrus and Allanridge – were expecting to receive their salaries on Wednesday. However, Matjhabeng has failed to pay them after the courts froze the municipality’s accounts. This forced its workers to picket outside the municipal building in Welkom demanding answers from management. The employees said they had not been informed prior to payday that they would not…

Teenage pregnancies have become the scourge of South Africa – and the Free State has not been spared. Currently, the province accounts for 13.3 percent of pregnancies of children between ages 10 to 14 years old, according to the Department of Health’s national records for 2021/2022. The situation is dire and some girls fall pregnant even before they get their periods. This is alarming considering the serious challenge of underreported cases by schools on our EMIS system. Lejweleputswa, Mangaung and Thabo Mofutsanyane districts present the highest learner pregnancy rates in the province. The Provincial Learner Pregnancy Summit, which took place…

Fugitive prisoner Thabo Bester and celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana are now back in the country, with their specially chartered flight landing at Lanseria Airport in Johannesburg in the early hours of Thursday. The two lovers, who went on the run in March after news of his escape from a Bloemfontein jail emerged, were caught in Tanzania last Friday together with a Mozambican national believed to have assisted them to cross borders and evade law-enforcement authorities. A government delegation then travelled to Tanzania to secure their return to South Africa. Justice Minister Ronald Lamola and Police Minister Bheki Cele are expected…

The father of celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana and a suspended prison warder have been charged with murder, arson and aiding and abetting notorious rapist and murderer Thabo Bester’s escape from jail. The two men made a brief appearance in the Bloemfontein Magistrates Court on Tuesday but they were not asked to plead. They will remain in police custody after the case was postponed to 17 April for a possible bail application. Bester was arrested in Tanzania on Friday having fled from the Mangaung Correctional Centre last May by faking his own death in a fire and planting a corpse in…

Nandipha Magudumana’s father and a former prison warden are expected to appear before the Bloemfontein Magistrates Court on Tuesday in connection with rapist and murderer Thabo Bester’s escape from prison. Police confirmed the development on Monday. Magudumana’s father, Zolile Cornelius Sekeleni, was arrested at his Port Edward home in the Eastern Cape province on Friday, while Senohe Matsoara, a former correctional services employee, was nabbed at his residence in Bloemfontein on Saturday. They are accused of helping Bester to fake his own death in a daring prison break from the Mangaung Correctional Centre where he was serving a life sentence…

A Free State government ambulance ferrying a nine-month-old patient together with her mother from Ladybrand to Bloemfontein overturned after hitting a pothole along the N8 road on Monday afternoon. The baby did not suffer any injury, according to the provincial health department. The mother, however, is said to have complained of hand and neck pain after the accident. According to Free State health spokesperson Mondli Mvambi, one of the emergency medical services vehicle’s crew members suffered “moderate” injuries whilst the other one sustained “minor” injuries. The ambulance was transferring the young patient from Senorita Ntlabathi Hospital in Ladybrand to Pelonomi…

The drama surrounding the daring escape from a Bloemfontein prison by convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester has taken another macabre twist with revelations that his girlfriend, well-known celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana, allegedly stole three bodies from Free State mortuaries. The two lovers, who went on the run a fortnight ago after news of his escape from the Mangaung Correctional Centre emerged, were apprehended in Tanzania over the weekend together with a Mozambican national believed to have assisted them to cross borders and evade law-enforcement authorities. At the time of their arrest, they were found with several fake passports which…

Thabo Bester’s mother is living in fear as the manhunt for the convicted rapist who faked his own death in a daring prison break continues. Maria Mabaso says she has been receiving death threats since the news broke of her son’s escape from the Mangaung Correctional Centre last year. “I don’t feel safe. I get phone calls every day. I don’t know who to trust,” she told eNCA on Wednesday. Authorities said they had believed Bester died after setting himself alight in the privately run prison in Bloemfontein on 3 May 2022, but last weekend the police said DNA tests…

A private plane flying was forced to make an emergency landing in the Free State town of Welkom on after the pilot discovered a deadly cobra that had slithered into the cockpit. The light aircraft, a Beechcraft Baron 58, was carrying four passengers from Cape Town to Nelspruit when the pilot, Rudolph Erasmus, spotted the snake while flying at 11 000 feet on Monday. He landed the plane safely in Welkom, about 140 kilometres northeast of provincial capital Bloemfontein. According to Erasmus, he first felt a cold sensation on his back but did not immediately process what was happening. “To…

Sexual violence in the form of sexual assault is a serious problem on South African university campuses, and it can be argued that it is sanctioned and embedded within institutional cultures. Sexual assault on university campuses is a serious issue that affects many students and can have a devastating impact on the survivors, their families and the wider community. Unfortunately, this is also a widespread problem, with many universities and colleges around the world reporting incidents of sexual assault and harassment. For example, statistics from recent studies and reports show alarming rates of sexual violence. In a 2019 survey conducted…