Former Gauteng MEC for health Qedani Mahlangu was mean to families of mental health patients who wanted to know where their loved ones would be moved.
This was revealed by former nursing manager Zanele Buthelezi at the Life Esidimeni inquest on Monday where she was cross examined by former director of mental health Dr Makgabo Manamela's legal team.
“Her tone of voice was very harsh when responding to families and secondly her facial expression was that of undermining. She was dismissing the questions and she was choosing who to point out and actually say 'not you' when people were asking questions,” said Buthelezi, adding that this happened at a meeting in January 2016.
The inquest which is being held in the Pretoria high court aims to see if there can be any criminal liability for the deaths of 144 mental health patients who were moved from the health facility to ill-equipped non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to cut costs.
In a statement that was presented to the court, Buthelezi said Mahlangu told families that if they want patients to stay at Life Esidimeni, then they can negotiate directly with the health facility.
“When asked how much Life Esidimeni would charge, MEC Mahlangu said it was not her problem. The family also asked how the MEC and the department of health were going to prepare the mental healthcare users psychologically for transfer since they had adjusted to life in Life Esidimeni, she could not answer the family,” read the statement.
Buthelezi said it was difficult to prepare patients because they were not given much information about where patients would be going to.
Last week, she told the court that 60% of the patients were not dischargeable and needed a secure environment to stay safe.
“Dr Manamela would testify that she established a team which she referred to as the NGO identifying team. This team had to report back to her on the readiness of the NGOs on receiving mental healthcare users and the report she received was that the NGOs were ready,” said her legal representative Adv Ndivhoniswani Makhani.
Makhani said Life Esidimeni did not want to co-operate with the department and that the removal of patients would have been a success otherwise.
“If Life Esidimeni had prepared themselves from the date of the notice, which is September 2015, then the steps [of removal of patients] could have been achieved,” Makhani said.
To which Buthelezi replied: “I will reiterate that there were challenges and discussions because we did not know where they are going we didn't know the new NGOs and we did not know the admission criteria.”
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