Gauteng's former health chief and mental-health director negligently caused psychiatric patients' deaths by moving them into unfit NGOs, a High Court inquest found.
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In a judgment handed down on 10 July 2024 (case I001/21), Judge Mmonoa Teffo of the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, found that the deaths of nine mental-health-care users in the Life Esidimeni transfers were negligently caused by former Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu and former provincial Director of Mental Health Dr Makgabo Manamela. The court found Mahlangu ended the department's contract with Life Esidimeni against repeated expert warnings and that Manamela hastily implemented the move to ill-equipped NGOs, some licensed without prescribed protocols, 'creat[ing] circumstances in which the deaths of the deceased were inevitable'; 141 patients' dockets had earlier been declined for prosecution. The state had conceded liability in an earlier arbitration, and in April 2026, nearly two years after the inquest, the National Prosecuting Authority announced a decision to prosecute those implicated.
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