Durban - Drug mule Tessa Beetge would rather stay locked up in a Brazilian jail than be released on to the streets, she stressed in a Special Assignment TV programme on Sunday night.
Beetge was at times emotional and tearful during the 30-minute interview.
But when it came to the question of being released to serve out the three-year balance of her eight-year sentence on parole, she was adamant. She would feel a lot safer in prison than on the outside.
“I will ask the judge (that) I want to stay. I do not want to see the streets of Brazil,” she said.
And when the time finally came to leave the female penitentiary in Sao Paulo, she wanted a federal policeman on one side of her and another on the other side.
But if she is unsuccessful in seeing out her sentence behind bars, she may be forced on to the streets of Brazil.
Thousands of homeless people who are addicted to crack cocaine throng some of the city’s streets, known as the City of Zombies, where it is easier to buy crack than food.
In Brazil it is not a crime to use crack, only to sell it.
Beetge, formerly of the South Coast, was sentenced to 12 years after being arrested with 10kg of cocaine in her luggage at the Sao Paul airport in 2008. Her sentence was later reduced to eight years for good behaviour.
She maintained in her TV interview that she was duped by her recruiters, Sheryl Cwele and Nigerian Frank Nabolisa. They are now serving 12-year sentences.
She would be thankful if, one day, they apologised to her as, “that’s what needs to be done”, she said. She had asked God to forgive them, but they needed to realise that what they had done was wrong.
Beetge recalled asking her mother, Maria Swanepoel, to forgive Cwele and Nabolisa for what they had done to the family, but her mother had told her that it was difficult.
Beetge’s mother was instrumental in getting Cwele and Nabolisa convicted, gathering e-mails and the “lucky coat” that Beetge had worn to identify herself on her trip to Brazil. Swanepoel died last month. She was divorced from Beetge’s father, Gert, and was planning to marry Jakes Jacobs. “I loved her. We had the best time in our lives. We were waiting for Tessa to come home and then we would have got married,” Jacobs told the interviewer.
Meanwhile, in the “sordid, overcrowded” Brazilian prison, Beetge is still coping with the traumatic news of her mother’s death and she fought back tears when shown footage of her mother’s funeral.
“My mom’s passing has been a big thing because she was my everything,” Beetge confided.
When she gets out, she will take it one day at a time, saying that it would be harder now that her mother was no longer there.
“Thank you for everything you have done,” she said, referring to her mother.
“The most important thing that kept me strong… is the physical touch from your loved one. You need that…You need to hold that person and say, ‘I love you’,” and that’s a chance I will never have with my mother,” the tearful prisoner said.
Her regret, she said, was the time she had been away from her two daughters. She had written to them and her mother had forwarded the letters, she said.
“For some reason, my mom did not want me to write to them directly. I don’t know the reasons. I will never know. I am not sure if my daughters ever got the letters,” she said.
Beetge is the longest serving South African in the women’s prison. There are 70 other South Africans in the same prison for drug-related crimes.
Beetge has been represented in Brazil by the public defender’s office, which has twice appealed on her behalf and also lodged a petition of habeas corpus with the Superior Justice Court, “but it is very difficult to change her situation”, a representative said.
South Africa had not signed a prisoner-transfer agreement with Brazil and there was no prospect of that being signed soon, viewers heard.
This means Beetge cannot be returned home to serve out her parole time.
A representative of the Department of International Relations and Co-operation said a person had to serve a sentence where the crime was committed.
Daily News