Durban - Convicted South Coast drug mule, Tessa Beetge, who was released from a Brazilian jail in March, has remarried. Her new husband is another former prisoner, who was also locked up in a Brazilian prison for unrelated drug-trafficking offences.
Beetge was asked to forward stamps to fellow South African Shane Heydenrych and the two began corresponding.
They met for the first time two years later in holding cells after they were both released on parole.
But it was only in March when they were on a plane being deported back to South Africa that they were able to kiss for the first time.
The couple married at a small wedding at the Volle Evangelie Kerk in Roodepoort, west of Joburg, last weekend, The Sunday Times reported.
Beetge, a mother of two, served five years and 11 months of her eight-year sentence in the Penitenciaria Feminina Da Capital in Sao Paulo.
Heydenrych completed 30 months of his four-year sentence at another prison 300km away.
Beetge was arrested in June, 2008, after 10kg of cocaine was found in her luggage at the Sao Paulo Airport.
Sheryl Cwele, the former director of health at the Hibiscus Coast Municipality, and her accomplice, Frank Nabolisa, had recruited Beetge.
In 2011, they were sentenced in the Pietermaritzburg High Court to 12 years imprisonment for dealing in cocaine.
They appealed and the Supreme Court of Appeal increased it to 20 years, but the Constitutional Court reinstated it to 12 year sentences.
Since then, Nabolisa has received an additional 20-year sentence for dealing in dangerous narcotics and contravening the Medicine and Related Substances Act.
He was sentenced in the Wynberg Regional Court in Gauteng in May for dealing in dangerous dependence-producing drugs, contravening the act and being found in possession of 2.4kg of cocaine, 5.8kg of paracetamol and 2.7kg of Hexamine at one of his drug storage facilities in Joburg.
Nabolisa received 20 years for drug dealing and 10 years for contravening the act. The two sentences will run concurrently after he has served his 12-year sentence in Westville prison.
Daily News