R174 000 lawyer's bill to cut Esidimeni contract

20 June 2018

The Gauteng Health Department paid R174 000 to the law firm that gave legal advice to terminate the Life Esidimeni contract for 2000 mental health patients, a decision that led to huge trauma and 144 deaths.

This was revealed yesterday by the Department in a reply to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature.

According to the reply, Ngcebetsha Madlanga Attorneys (NMA) advised that six months’ notice had to be given to exit the contract in terms of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) signed with Life Esidimeni.

This simple legal advice cost an outrageous amount of money and could have been done by the Department’s own legal experts who deal with SLAs with a wide range of organizations.

It is definitely fishy that NMA was given this job, as well as other jobs that earned this law firm R103 million in total from October 2014 to September 2017.

NMA was also used to oppose the two court applications that tried to stop the transfer of mental health patients to unsuitable NGOs where the 144 patients died.

They were also the personal lawyers for former Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu before she was called to testify at the Esidimeni Arbitration Hearings, a disturbing association that makes me suspect that she irregularly favoured them to ensure they got lots of legal work from the Department.

The large bills by NMA should be scrutinized by the Law Society so that money can be recovered for any overcharging which seems to be likely.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, 20 June 2018