An SA Police Service general and an ANC councillor used an NGO for domestic violence they were involved with to take mentally ill patients from Life Esidimeni health centres.
The scandal cost the lives of at least 94 mentally ill patients sent to 27 unlicensed NGOs, found the Health Ombudsman's report.
The Times reports that this is according to the Democratic Alliance’s Gauteng spokesperson on health‚ Jack Bloom. The Rebafaneyi home is for victims of domestic violence but a presentation from the home that Bloom has accessed shows that they received more than 100 mentally ill patients. They then sent the patients onwards to two other NGOs.
The report says police Major-General Sandra Malebe-Themba is the executive chair of this home and Tshwane ANC councillor and former Gauteng MMC for sports and recreation Nosipho Makeke-Tyobeka is listed as a committee member of the home.
General Malebe-Themba resigned from the police in 2013 after a misconduct probe but was re-employed after acting commissioner Kgomotso Phahlane took office in 2015. She is currently facing a complaint of racism.
The report says the home earned more than R270‚000 from R2‚700 for patients it was given a month. It passed on the patients to NGOs in Hennops River and one in Phelindaba. The Hennops river NGO was visited last year by a social worker dispatched by the Tshwane government and patients removed after a social worker said the place did not follow any laws.
Bloom is quoted in the report as saying: "The NGO was investigated after complaints received by DA Councillor Kingsley Wakelin that people living there were jumping the fences and disturbing the neighbuorhood. Christopher Mogwarane‚ 56‚ was one of the patients transferred to Rebafenyi in Hennops River from Esidimeni and died there. According to his brother Lucas‚ he was not happy there and he did not appear to be getting proper nutrition and medication."
Bloom said "it is shocking that a senior ANC councillor and a police general are involved (with a) NGO with unlicensed premises in which one patient died‚ possibly from neglect".
The report says the patients from Phelindaba NGO were removed in last month and sent to a hospital in Lenasia.
[link url="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017/02/13/ANC-councillor-and-police-general-implicated-in-unlicensed-premises-for-psychiatric-patients1"]The Times report[/link]