Esidimeni Mr Big lays low

With all the action on the national stage in past weeks, the questions that weren’t properly aired at the Life Esidimeni hearings appear to have been forgotten. Who was powerful enough to put the whole project together, and who stood to gain most, and in what way?

While it was always about the money, on paper there was too little for the trouble it caused: it’s impossible to imagine the deal was about Qedani Mahlangu and a few cronies skimming nongovernmental organisation (NGO) payments. Officials have gone to great lengths to protect whoever was the driving force behind the scheme. Somebody paid to get Mahlangu out of SA — somebody politically powerful enough that no one has blabbed.

What we do know is that this wasn’t simply an arrangement to enrich a few pals running NGOs. Depriving Life Esidimeni of the Gauteng government’s revenue flows would have made the company a soft takeover target. However, when patients started dying, whoever planned this ran for cover. It was probably not the Guptas, otherwise something about it would have surfaced in the Gupta leaks. So who learnt from the Gupta model and has a fiefdom in Gauteng?

Michael Fridjhon Parktown