Q&A What about the others? Did she lie about the number of deaths?

A Pretoria high court judge has found that former Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu and head of mental health Dr Makgabo Manamela caused nine of the 144 Life Esidimeni deaths. Chris Barron spoke to Gauteng’s shadow health MEC JACK BLOOM, who blew the whistle on the tragedy, and asked him

The judge needed autopsy reports, and there were no autopsy reports for the others. There was causality in that as well. The evidence was literally buried. Qedani Mahlangu could have got away with this if it hadn’t been for questions in the legislature and the fact that she had to disclose the deaths, and that private autopsies were done by relatives.

When I asked the question on September 13 2016, she said there were 36, but at that stage it was more than double that number, and of course the total number was 144. There was an attempt to cover up from start to finish. She should have been fired immediately after that, but premier David Makhura kept her on.

How many lives did the attempted cover-up cost?

There could have been more timely and effective intervention between September 2016 and the time the ombud’s report came out in January 2017, during which many more people died. The problem was the MEC wasn’t suspended or dismissed immediately. Also, Dr Makgabo Manamela, I recall, was dissembling and trying to explain what was happening, but meanwhile they should have been doing all they could to save more lives.

Could this kind of thing happen again?

It already is, because I don’t think mental-health patients get the treatment they deserve. Facilities in our hospitals are not up to scratch. Everybody blames the bad NGOs for the tragedy, but there are some very good NGOs, and they’re suffering because their subsidies have been delayed, onerous demands are made of them, and they find it very difficult to operate. This year alone I’ve been dealing with NGOs who’ve said they can’t operate because their subsidy hasn’t been paid. Good NGOs are very badly treated.

So the welfare of mental-health patients is still not being prioritised?

No. I think we’re seeing the same callous attitude.

What about cancer patients?

Close to R800m was put in the budget to buy the machines for radiation treatment, and even to buy services in the private health-care sector for public health patients, but it actually wasn’t spent, and patients are dying. So it’s a combination of incompetence and lack of care, and it’s not just mental-health patients it’s across the board.

To what extent has the department of health been professionalised since the Life Esidimeni tragedy?

I don’t see it. Since Life Esidimeni, we had the PPE [personal protective equipment] corruption, where money was misappropriated that was meant to fight the Covid epidemic; hundreds of millions meant for extra wards that was also misappropriated; the Tembisa hospital corruption; a backlog of surgical cases, which the MEC claims they’ve cut but the figures show its gone up over the last year to more than 35,000.

Is this the MEC who’s just been reappointed?

Yes.

Does her reappointment inspire you with any confidence?

Not at all. I don’t think anything’s changed in that department since Life Esidimeni, and I think it’s going to be more of the same.