Suspended head grilled over Life Esidimeni deaths
Manamela at a loss to explain licence anomalies
THE most senior official behind the Life Esidimeni tragedy‚ Dr Makgoba Manamela‚ took the stand at the arbitration hearing yesterday to explain her role in events that led to the deaths of 143 mentally ill patients.
She contradicted herself‚ and had to be told frequently by Judge Dikgang Moseneke to speak slowly and answer the question.
Manamela had to be subpoenaed twice before she would appear‚ after her lawyers found an error on the first subpoena.
She was found by the health ombudsman to have written invalid licences for ill-equipped and inexperienced NGOs to look after severely mentally ill patients‚ who later died.
Some NGO licences had incorrect addresses on them‚ or were for places that did not exist.
Manamela told evidence leader Advocate Nontlantla Yina that all the NGOs were licensed and had been inspected by a team before she issued the paperwork.
She was then told by Yina that she had issued a licence to the Precious Angels NGO with the address incorrectly listed as Lynnwood‚ Pretoria, although it never operated there.
Instead‚ Precious Angels – at which 20 patients died – operated in Danville and Atteridgeville.
When asked how an inspection had taken place‚ as she claimed‚ for an NGO that had never operated at the Lynnwood premises‚ she could not explain.
“NGOs are authorised for operating for a particular period of the financial year‚” she said, but did not answer the question.
Moseneke eventually became annoyed with her failure to explain discrepancies in the licences.
“This is not a lesson on how clever we can be,” he told her.
“Do you know how many people died at Precious Angels?”
Manamela‚ who has a PhD in psychiatric nursing‚ admitted that she had met with patients’ families before the move and knew that they had not wanted their loved ones to be moved as the new facilities were unable to look after them.
She said there had been 773 patients at Life Esidimeni homes that had no known family members.
Two NGO owners have already testified that they were forced by Manamela to take patients they told her they could not accommodate.
But Manamela denied this, saying: “That is not true. That is not true.”
Her lawyer‚ Lerato Mashilane‚ had earlier delayed Manamela’s testimony by about four hours‚ by asking for a postponement in what was described as a “wholly unprepared” submission.
Moseneke eventually asked the fumbling lawyer: “How long have you been practising?”
Section 27 also said that while it had subpoenaed Manamela to appear at the hearings‚ her lawyer had, quite bizarrely, asked Section 27’s lawyer to commission (validate) Manamela’s affidavit challenging her appearance.
Section 27’s lawyer‚ advocate Adila Hassim‚ had refused to do so.
Hassim‚ who is representing 55 of the victims’ families for Section 27‚ described Manamela’s conduct in asking for a postponement as contemptuous of the arbitrator and of the victims’ families.
Moseneke said he had exercised extreme patience listening to Mashilane’s request for a postponement‚ which he dismissed.