‘Corruption mafia’ looting Gauteng’s ailing health system

A Gauteng hospital “corruption mafia”, reportedly headed by the now suspended Tembisa hospital chief executive Ashley Mthunzi, has been “manipulating” tender processes to allegedly plunder the province’s ailing health system. 

A Mail & Guardian investigation has also unearthed an alleged assassination plot against a whistleblower who is afraid that his death for exposing graft, which he said was rife in Gauteng’s public health sector, would “be in vain”. 

The assassination plot comes on the back of the gunning down of Babita Deokaran, a Gauteng health official, in August last year. She died in a hail of bullets while working with law enforcement agencies to expose the rot in the provincial system. 

The M&G investigation has tracked how Mthunzi moved around with the same executive management team at Pholosong Hospital, Far East Rand Hospital and Tembisa Tertiary Hospital — in Gauteng’s Ekurhuleni metro — where the team partook in alleged corrupt and frivolous procurement.