Well-known Sandton personality Nandipha Magudumana, founder of Optimum Medical Aesthetics, a skincare clinic specialising in non-surgical treatments like Botox, who has been linked to escaped serial rapist Thabo Bester, is no longer registered as a doctor, according to the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).
The HPCSA has confirmed she has been suspended from practising as a doctor – and, if she is still practising, it is a criminal offence.
The HPCSA told News24 that Magudumana had been suspended under “Section 19A(1)(b) of the Health Professions Act for failure to pay annual fees when they were due on 1 April 2021”.
As a result, she would have been unable to legally practise medicine for nearly two years.
While stressing that the HPSCA could not take any action against Magudumana as she was no longer a registered doctor, the council said she could be prosecuted if it were found she had been practising as a doctor while not registered.
Instagram influencer and self-described medical doctor Magudumana has not returned to work at her Morningside clinic since news of Bester’s escape broke, and her staff say they haven’t seen her for weeks, and can’t get hold of her on the phone.
Bester, the so-called Facebook rapist, pleaded guilty to two charges of rape and one of murder in separate trials in 2011 and 2012 and was sentenced to an effective life term.
After he was reported to have committed suicide by setting himself alight in his cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein in May last year, GroundUp published a series of stories on evidence that he had, in fact, escaped.
GroundUp recently published other reports linking Magudumana to Bester, both of whom have since gone to ground. In the wake of these reports, Magudumana’s social media accounts went silent and some have been deactivated.
Last week, Magudumana created more headlines after apparently being evicted from her swish Hyde Park mansion.
While her furniture was being loaded on to vans, according to a security guard, the landlord arrived and said some of the items being removed from the building belonged to him, after which a row broke out.
The guard said she was being evicted due to non-payment of her rent.
The building is now abandoned. The property next door, which was supposedly being renovated to become Magudumana’s new wellness clinic, stands deserted and half-finished.
Bester was seen shopping with Magudumana and her daughter in Sandton in June 2022, almost two months after the prison cell fire in which Bester was thought to have died. Magudumana has also claimed to be Bester’s customary-law wife, and rumours are that she was his accomplice in his prison escape.
It appears that the two had been running, among numerous other things, a property renovation business called Arum Holdings, with Bester using various pseudonyms.
On the identify of the corpse previously identified in the prison fire as being Bester, Police Minister Bheki Cele admitted that “it looks like the DNA confirms the person who died … is not the real person you expect”.
“The police are aware…they are on the tracks, chasing and trying to find that person again,” Cele said.
Scandalous stories have since emerged of the many businesses Bester ran from his cell, and that numerous prison staff, including management, were all complicit in his escape.
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