On 17 June 2021, the Pretoria News published a report based on a statement made by the Independent Media alleging that Gosiame Sithole gave birth to decuplets at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital, and that government was trying to cover up medical negligence.
These allegations are false, unsubstantiated and only serve to tarnish the good reputation of Steve Biko Academic Hospital and the Gauteng Provincial Government.
It has now been established by medical practitioners that Ms Sithole did not give birth to any babies in recent times. It has also been established that she was not pregnant in recent times.
Decuplets story a hoax – Gauteng govt Politicsweb 23/6/2021
Advocate Michael Donen to head probe into decuplets expose IOL19/7/2021
In February this year, Yogas Nair was appointed internal ombud for Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo Independent Media newspaper company.
In an interview conducted at the time she assured readers that, on her watch, ethical journalism would be promoted and that ‘accountability was sacrosanct’.
Have subsequent events vindicated her claim?
Only a few weeks later, an editorial by the editor of The Star, Sifiso Mahlangu – widely perceived to be part of a Sekunjalo smear campaign against Maria Ramos– was ruled by the North Gauteng High Court to be defamatory and an apology was published.
What is significant is that, thereafter, the photograph of Mahlangu disappeared from the page on the IOL website which features the editors employed by Iqbal Survé
The editor of the Saturday Star, Kashiefa Ajam, is featured but not Mahlangu.
The IOL website shows that the last article by him was posted more than a month ago.
If Sifiso Mahlangu has lost his job because his defamatory editorial on Maria Ramos brought Sekunjalo Independent Media into disrepute, what are the implications for Piet (Tembisa Ten) Rampedi?
The Ramos judgment is unlikely to have resonated beyond our borders, but every major news agency in the world has justifiably described Rampedi’s fake news decuplets articles as a hoax.
On 16 June, Sekunjalo Independent Media issued a statement saying it stood by Rampedi and his ‘exclusive’ account of the ‘Guinness World Record’ babies who belong to an ‘elite club’:
‘The media has a role to play in protecting the vulnerable. We see a young mother, who has been through a traumatic, difficult birth of an unprecedented ten babies, being abused, threatened, and being given the run-around, to hide what looks like a major case of criminal medical negligence’.
On 17 June, Rampedi accused hospital authorities of a ‘mammoth cover-up’.
A day later, Iqbal Survé’s newspapers headlined an article about the ‘mistreatment of broken mom’ who had been subjected to ‘mental torture, starvation and being handcuffed’ after being admitted to Weskoppies psychiatric hospital in terms of the Mental Health Care Act as an ‘involuntary patient’.
Despite Sithole’s obvious vulnerability she was, according to Survé’s newspapers, brutalised by Gauteng hospital staff.
If Sithole’s admission to hospital involved ‘a major case of criminal medical negligence’, why have no charges been laid?
If this allegation is justified, then those guilty of such heinous behaviour must be sanctioned.
If it is not true, then those falsely accused must receive an apology and those responsible for spreading the lie will justifiably and permanently lose the public’s trust resulting in declining newspaper sales and advertising revenue.
The hospitals cited by Rampedi deny involvement; the alleged father says the ‘Tembisa Ten’ do not exist; on 16 June, Julius Malema, acknowledging that the babies do not exist, said Rampedi was misled and a medical examination of Sithole showed no signs of her having recently given birth.
All that then remains to be established is whether Sithole was inhumanely treated in contravention of the Hippocratic Oath and what sanction must be visited upon Rampedi and Sekunjalo Independent Media for the incalculable reputational harm they have done at local and international level to South African journalism.
In response to Sekunjalo’s claims of maltreatment of Gosiame Sithole, the National Health Department urged Iqbal Survé’s newspapers to assist the allegedly abused woman to lay a charge with the Health Ombudsman, Professor Malegapuru Makgoba.
This suggestion was ignored and, instead, on 16 July, Iqbal Survé announced that Michael Donen had been appointed to investigate the situation.
According to Sekunjalo Independent Media: ‘Donen commented that he is ‘looking forward to investigating the situation in question and attempting to clear up the confusion, which appears to exist at present.’
More than three months later, advocate Donen has yet to take the public into his confidence over the ‘confusion’ that ‘appears to exist’ about the ‘Guinness World Record’ scam involving the biologically impossible claim that a 48-year-old woman had given birth to ten babies.
Inexplicable abuse
An obvious first step in such an investigation would be for Donen to interview Gosiame Sithole and, given the inexplicable abuse she is alleged to have suffered in her hour of greatest need, one assumes she would be eager to make her trauma a matter of record.
And, given the justifiable local and international outrage that would result if Donen was refused access to Sithole, it is hard to imagine the Gauteng Health Department doing so, particularly as they have called upon Sekunjalo to liaise with the Health Ombudsman.
The next step, surely, would be to ask for the assistance of Professor Malegapuru Makgoba.
That’s what he is there for, that is what he does and he has the authority and the resources to uncover medical malfeasance if it exists.
Contrary to the claim by an already-discredited reporter of a ‘mammoth cover up’, the Sunday World reports that every effort was made at administrative level – with Iqbal Survé’s input – to ascertain whether the ‘Tembisa Ten’ babies exist, and it quotes Professor Makgoba as saying he has not been approached in this regard.
Furthermore, four months ago Sekunjalo’s senior investigative reporter, Sizwe Dlamini, was tasked with ascertaining the whereabouts of the decuplets but the ‘seasoned journalist’ has yet to produce any evidence of their existence, which is hardly surprising.
In early June this year, Gosiame Sithole was one of the most high media-profile medical patients in the world and it would have been the height of folly for the Gauteng state medical personnel to have been cruel or negligent in their treatment of her.
What I find telling is that this is alleged to have happened in a society which holds the concept of ubuntu in high regard.
What is even more telling is that not a single person-of-conscience has come forward as a whistle-blowing witness to corroborate the Sekunjalo accusation of ill-treatment, not a single video clip has been posted, not a single document has been leaked to substantiate the ‘torture’ claim.
If and when advocate Donen’s report eventually appears, will it have, as a consequence, the accountability to which Sekunjalo internal ombud Yogas Nair refers? In an article when she was appointed, Nair wrote:
Independent Media’s internal Ombud’s office does have teeth. It operates exactly like the Press Council of South Africa, consisting of highly experienced panel members who act without fear or favour.
If Sifiso Mahlangu was shown the door at The Star because of the failed campaign to damage the reputation of Maria Ramos, what justification can there be for the continued employment of Piet Rampedi – even if he is one of Survé’s most obsequious imbongis?
• The ‘Ekurhuleni 11’ video clip reveals the extent to which a once-respected newspaper company has been reduced to a joke.
• The defamation of Maria Ramos shows, yet again, the extent to which ethical journalism has been abandoned on the watch of “the other Mandela doctor”, the man who attended the Brett Kebble funeral and the Gupta wedding, the man who gives unstinting support to China, a country where media freedom does not exist.
• The unannounced departure of the editor of the The Star shows the extent to which the trust compact which should exist between newspaper and reader has been violated.
According to the Sekunjalo Independent Media statement on Gosiame Sithole on 16 June which called for ‘full disclosure’:
“She was given no food, no support, no post-natal medical care, and no counselling after an unprecedented birth. Any birth can be difficult, but that of delivering 10 babies is exceptional and should have been suitably prepared for.”
Most troubling of all, therefore, is the unexplained three-month silence of a respected human rights lawyer in a case which, so we have been told, has a compelling human rights element, a silence which contradicts the accountability claim of Yogas Nair.
Both the hospitals where Gosiame Sithole claims to have been treated for her pregnancy, Steve Biko Academic Hospital and the Mediclinic Medforum Hospital in Tshwane, deny having seen the babies.
Were those denials made in bad faith?
If not, for how much longer must the personnel at those hospitals live under the cloud of suspicion created by a reporter who once told us that the South African Revenue Service had a ‘Rogue Unit’ which was running a brothel – a false accusation that had a devastating impact on the institution and those so unjustly accused?
Justice delayed is justice denied.
The views of the writer are not necessarily those of the Daily Friend or the IRR