From Chidhumo to Thabo Bester… the anatomy of a great prison escape

Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter

OVER two decades before Thabo Bester grabbed the attention of the world with his masterfully evil plan to escape from a maximum-security prison, Zimbabweans were marvelling at the exploits of Stephen Chidhumo, another ruthlessly cunning man who became the first man to successfully walk out of the walls of the country’s best guarded correctional facility.

Bester’s escape from Mangaung Correctional Centre in South Africa has grabbed headlines across the world, not only for its daring and cunning but also for its elaborate nature, with details still emerging 11 months after he walked away a free man.

After all, Bester not only escaped prison, he also faked his own death, thus, in one masterful swoop freeing himself from his legal troubles while also ending the life of the man known as the Facebook Rapist.

It was an escape befitting a James Bond thriller, and for some Zimbabweans perhaps brought back echoes of Chidhumo, a man who managed to free himself from the bonds of justice thrice.

A skilled escape artiste who the ZRP said was also an expert karateka, Chidhumo fled custody in Masvingo in 1995, after his arrest in Bulawayo following a robbery spree that began in 1994.  Chidhumo was initially arrested in 1991 for car theft.

Following his re-arrest by the Masvingo Police Dog Section, Chidhumo would find himself at Mutimurefu prison where he struck up a friendship with a man who would then become his partner-in-crime, Edgar Masendeke. Together with fellow convicts Langton Moses Zano, Langton Charumbira and Jameson Maverudze Musara, they managed to make a dramatic escape from prison and start a reign of terror on both sides of the Zimbabwean-Mozambique border.

Chidhumo would later be arrested in Mozambique before being charged and found guilty on 24 counts of various crimes. He was then sentenced to 30 years by a Masvingo Magistrate after a Regional Magistrate, Mr Selo Nare had sentenced him to 42 years for other offences which he committed in Manicaland.

It was while he was in Chikurubi that Chidhumo would hatch a plan that would have left even Thabo Bester, South Africa’s criminal mastermind who was able to even run glamorous businesses while behind bars, green with envy.

Ever since their arrests in 1997 and subsequent executions in 2002, history has joined Masendeke and Chidhumo at the hip, to the extent that some might assume that they were a deadly twin-headed snake that planned and carried out the historic escape from Chikurubi on the morning of 18 August in 1997.

However, for that escape, Chidhumo was in the company of Pedzisayi Musariri, an ex-policeman, ex-soldier Elias Chauke and Mariko Ngulube. The expertise and weapons know-how of Chauke and Musariri, as former servicemen, were to prove crucial for the execution of the plan.

“We connived and influenced each other because Musariri and Chauke now knew very well where the towers were and the escape route,” Chidhumo would later tell Magistrate Lazarus Murendo during his trial.

Former hardcore criminal and convict Fungai Mutenda, who at one time was in custody with the dangerous quartet has in the past claimed to have been an integral part of the escape plan.

Mutenda, who claims to have pulled out at the 11th hour after a friend in prison had a premonition that things would go bad in a dream, said that the gang had spent three months preparing for their August 18 escape.

“There was limited privacy so we used codes that only the gang could understand to avoid being detected. Using encrypted language, which most youths who grew up in Mbare by then understood, I wrote a letter to my sister asking her to bring hacksaw blades that we would later use to cut security bars, and she delivered. The blades were perfectly stashed in my supplies. Even the officers on duty could not detect them. For more than three months we would cut the bars bit-by-bit every day until the day finally arrived,” claimed Mutenda

The escape itself was as brutal as it was dramatic. After prisoners had converged for their morning exercises, the quartet had fled from the rest of the group, crawling through a broken window in the exercise yard and into a catch way used by officers to gain access into one of the prison towers. Once there, they disarmed a guard, grabbing him by the throat before using his rifle to attack the guard in the next tower.

“I ran to where the prison officer was and disarmed him. I ran off with his rifle but because I could not use it, I gave it to Musariri who could use it properly,” Chidhumo would later recount.

Chidhumo and his gallery of rogues would somehow evade all ten shots fired by the next guard, who emptied his magazine in their direction, while they fired three times at him themselves.

“I followed him because I did not want him to disturb my co-accused by alerting other prison guards. The officer threw his rifle at me in fear and I moved towards the next tower.”

A guard in the third tower went out guns blazing, firing at the quartet who shot him below the waist, mortally wounding him, before dispossessing him of his gun.  According to Chidhumo, the quartet held a guard hostage in a tower, with Musariri and Chauke tying jerseys together before smashing a window to lower them to their escape.

“Musariri came down first while Chauke remained holding the guard in the tower at gunpoint. He later threw the rifle at Musariri. Then I followed using the jerseys tied into a rope. I had to throw myself down because the jerseys were now torn into shreds,” Chidhumo said.

During the descent from the tower, Ngulube would fall down and break his leg. His comrades, after dragging him for about 20 metres, would then abandon him. Chauke had also hurt his back during their dramatic climb down from the tower.

“Ngulube failed to respond when I enquired if he was hurt. Musariri and I then escaped first from the security wall crawling. Chauke followed and it was then that he informed me that he had hurt his back,” the three-time escapee said.

Leaving the incapacitated Ngulube behind, Chauke, Musariri and Chidhumo would scale the prison fence once the guards on watch had exhausted their ammunition and stopped firing in their direction. It would take them another 15 minutes to crawl down the trench, where they received more fire from guards in other towers. All, including the top marksman from the Zimbabwe Prison Services, exhausted their ten rounds of ammunition without hitting the three.

It reportedly took long for prison guards to react as the inter-communication system at the prison reportedly failed. It is thought that the escaped convicts may have tampered with it.

Eventually, reinforcements came from a neighbouring police Support Unit camp, who were all kitted and armed while on parade waiting for a training exercise when alarm was raised. They would later be joined by more reinforcements from the army 1 Commando Regiment while air support was provided by the Air Force of Zimbabwe as the search dragnet widened by afternoon.

The search effort burnt the thick forest on Chikurubi Farm, as they tried to flush out the escaped convicts but blaze, which was started at the perimeter and was allowed to blow towards the jail, was futile as it did not drive the prisoners into the open as was hoped.

At around noon, a prison officer fired into the direction of a sound and at the other end of that bullet was Musariri, who promptly emerged from the bush. Musariri, a hardened man, was shot in the leg but did not stop, dying in a hail of bullets as officers fired repeatedly into his chest.

Two hours later, the search party would find Chauke, who showed his military training by taking off his clothes and rolling in soot for camouflage. However, as a helicopter hovered over him, he surrendered and was apprehended by prison staff.

Chidhumo, whose notoriety was already widespread, was the only man to make good his escape. That night, Chikurubi sounded like a battlefield as ground and air parties fired at any moving object in search of the escapee. By that time, however, Chidhumo was long gone.

“I hid between two large rocks when a prison vehicle with officers in the search party came searching the area. I hid there while two helicopters circled the bushes burnt during the search…I used my rifle to rob in Penhalonga to get money for my journey. I hid the rifle on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique before crossing into Mozambique.”

Like South Africa’s Bester did by “recruiting” and marrying celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana, Chidhumo ensured he had a safe haven for himself by reportedly marrying on the Mozambican side.

“If Chidhumo and Masendeke go to Mozambique, they are well received,” said then police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena as the search continued for the escaped jailbird.

“At one time they were actually coming from Mozambique to commit crimes in Zimbabwe.”

About 29 days after his escape, Chidhumo would be arrested at Manga in Beira, after a joint operation by the Zimbabwean and Mozambican police forces, making a famous last stand as he attacked officers with a shovel and hoe before he was shot twice on the hip and thigh. As he attended court a few days later, one of the bullets was still lodged in his leg.

Like Bester, Chidhumo’s escape from a maximum security facility would be subject to an inquiry, as security services introspected on what seemed like an improbable Houdini act. Commissioner of Prisons at the time, Mr Langton Chigwida would constitute a tribunal to inquire into the competence of nine officers from the prison.

This was after a three-man board of inquiry had found that the escape could have been foiled or even made difficult had proper operational procedures been followed. Chidhumo, who would later be baptised and christened Fidelis, was executed in 2002.