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After nine years of avoiding accountability, the Pretoria High Court ruled that the deaths of nine of the 144 Life Esidimeni patients were caused by the negligent conduct of former Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu and the head of the mental health division, Makgabo Manamela.
This follows months of gruelling testimony to determine if anyone should be held criminally liable for the 2016 tragedy that shocked South Africa.
The botched project claimed the lives of 144 mental health patients after they were relocated to cheaper care centres, many of which were later found to be unlicensed and grossly under-resourced. Many of the patients died due to starvation and severe neglect.
The tragedy takes its name from Life Esidimeni, a subsidiary of Life Healthcare, the private healthcare provider from which some 1,500 state patients were removed.
Under the guise of the “Gauteng Mental Health Marathon Project”, the patients were moved to cheaper facilities in line with the department’s policy of “deinstitutionalising” psychiatric patients. The patients suffered great indignity at their new facilities, with reports emerging that people suffered from hypothermia, dehydration and in cases where patients died, their bodies remained in bed for days. One centre even distributed one set of medication to all the patients in their care.
Many of the death certificates, however, listed ‘natural causes’ as a reason for their deaths.
The judgment in the #LifeEsidimeni inquest has been handed down. This is just one of the many who lost their loved ones in this tragic case.#SayTheirNames #Inquest@TheSADAG @LifeEsidimeni @OCJ_RSA pic.twitter.com/b5T2zthmRb
— SECTION27 (@SECTION27news) July 10, 2024
Former Gauteng Premier David Makhura told the inquest that when he inquired about the number of patients who had died, he was told that deaths of mental health patients at their facilities were not unusual and considered normal.
He stated that at the meeting, Mahlangu and her colleagues gave a presentation in which they compared the number of deaths in the past to what was presently happening, concluding that it was a normal trend.
However, during her testimony at the inquest, Mahlangu threw Makhura under the bus, accusing him of transferring mental health patients from Life Esidimeni to fraudulent care facilities.
“The ultimate decision to transfer the mental health patients was taken by the premier,” Mahlangu said at the time.
