Tembisa Hospital Graft a Damning Indictment on 'Captured' ANC

Clyde N.S. Ramalaine

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) recently exposed the looting of more than R2 billion from Tembisa Hospital, revealing entrenched corruption networks implicating senior officials and prominent business figures, including the president’s own kin.

Beyond the staggering statistics and frozen assets, the scandal exposes a recurring pattern in South African governance: political leaders responding to crises with performative shock rather than decisive action.

On 29 September 2025, the SIU released an interim report revealing three syndicates involved in looting over R2 billion from Tembisa Hospital. The most prominent is the Maumela syndicate, allegedly linked to businessman Hangwani Morgan Maumela, President Ramaphosa’s nephew. SIU head Advocate Andy Mothibi confirmed that about 41 suppliers were tied to this network, including companies connected to Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala.

The report details 1,728 procurement bundles worth over R816 million linked to the Maumela network, with assets worth R520 million frozen across luxury properties and vehicles. Other syndicates, such as the Mazibuko network and the so-called Syndicate X, account for hundreds of millions more. In total, 207 service providers are implicated, with R122 million traced as kickbacks to Gauteng health officials.

These revelations confirm what the late whistleblower Babita Deokaran had warned about before her 2021 assassination: procurement orders were deliberately split under R500,000 to evade oversight. Her murder illustrated the mortal danger of confronting corruption, and her evidence now forms the foundation of these findings.

Yet as the SIU laid bare this intricate web of looting, the political response exposed a deeper malaise, not only of corruption but of leadership that performs accountability rather than practises it.

Predictably, South Africa’s political leadership responded with profound astonishment. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, whose department oversees Tembisa Hospital, expressed “shock” at the revelations and publicly asked, “Why Tembisa?”

That question epitomised a disturbing transformation—from accountable office-bearer to detached commentator. Rather than confronting administrative failure, Motsoaledi philosophised about it, distancing himself from responsibility. This posture mirrors a wider political habit entrenched at the highest levels.

President Ramaphosa has perfected this art. He was “shocked” in 2019 when Eskom implemented stage 4 loadshedding; “shocked” by the 2021 unrest that claimed over 350 lives despite intelligence warnings; and “appalled” by corruption exposed before the Zondo Commission, much of which unfolded while he was Deputy President. He expressed “concern” over the looting of COVID-19 relief funds, even though the systemic weaknesses that enabled theft were well known.

At the August 2025 National Dialogue, Ramaphosa again spoke not as a president but as an analyst, asking citizens: “Why do so many live in abject poverty, and so few in opulence? Why are the prospects for a white child so much better than those of a black child?”

These are not sociological puzzles; they are the very questions his presidency exists to answer. To pose them rhetorically, as though he were an observer rather than the nation’s chief executive, reflects a deliberate performance of detachment. Such repeated displays of astonishment are not spontaneous; they form a deliberate grammar of political deflection.

This recurring posture of surprise is not innocent. It is a strategy. Political leaders deploy shock as a means of deflecting scrutiny while maintaining the façade of moral concern. It allows them to occupy two roles at once: the informed insider and the bewildered outsider.

Political science distinguishes between institutional accountability, laws, audits, and oversight, and felt accountability, the internal conviction that one will truly be held responsible. In South Africa, while institutional mechanisms exist, enforcement remains weak. Consequently, leaders replace felt accountability with rhetorical performance, projecting empathy and indignation rather than exercising authority.

Critical theorist Guy Debord described modern politics as a spectacle, where performance eclipses substance. Within this spectacle, crises like Tembisa become stages on which leaders perform moral outrage, converting governance into theatre. The show of shock reassures the public that leaders care, while avoiding the concrete steps that real accountability demands.

Scholars of political behaviour further note that in times of crisis, politicians often shift from governors to analysts, from answer-givers to question-askers. Ramaphosa and Motsoaledi’s repeated rhetorical “why” questions embody this shift, signalling analytical distance rather than administrative responsibility. This culture of performed shock might appear human, but its consequences for governance are severe. When theatre replaces duty, the erosion of trust and institutional decay follow.

When leaders behave as detached observers, the damage is significant. Each act of performative shock erodes public trust, trivialises oversight, and reduces accountability to commentary. The SIU’s findings were not unforeseeable; they were the outcome of captured procurement systems and institutional neglect. For leaders to act “shocked” is not only disingenuous, but it also insults the intelligence of citizens.

If left unchallenged, this culture becomes normative, establishing spectacle as a substitute for responsibility. It transforms the constitutional duty of ministers into a series of well-rehearsed commentaries on their own failures. Citizens, meanwhile, are reduced to spectators in a governance drama where outrage substitutes for reform.

True accountability demands that leaders act, decide, and answer for outcomes, not pose as detached philosophers pondering national decline. When presidents and ministers express shock or ask rhetorical questions instead of delivering solutions, they transfer the burden of responsibility from the state to citizens. Governance becomes analysis in disguise.

This pattern also undermines institutional checks and balances. Oversight bodies like Parliament and Chapter 9 institutions lose their bite when political executives reframe failure as an abstract “national issue” rather than departmental incompetence. Each unchallenged act of performance further dissolves the moral contract between citizen and state.

The spectacle of shock cannot replace decisive governance. South Africans do not need leaders who ask why corruption thrives or why hospitals collapse; they need leaders who act to prevent it. The Tembisa revelations are not an aberration; they are the logical outcome of a political culture that prizes commentary over correction.

Ramaphosa’s administration, like those before it, relies on symbolic gestures, dialogues, commissions, and analytical rhetoric—rather than the hard discipline of enforcement. Citizens must therefore resist this substitution of performance for accountability. To permit political elites to masquerade as detached analysts is to normalise evasion and weaken democracy.

Real reform demands a reawakening of felt accountability, where leadership is measured not by commentary but by consequence. Oversight must be restored as a living principle, not a parliamentary ritual. Whistleblowers like Babita Deokaran must not die in vain; their courage must compel institutional protection, not presidential empathy.

Until the ANC abandons its theatre of shock and embraces genuine responsibility, governance will remain performance art and accountability an illusion. The Tembisa scandal should not conclude with another televised expression of dismay; it should mark the beginning of a civic insistence that leaders answer with action, not astonishment.

* Clyde N.S. Ramalaine is a theologian, political analyst, lifelong social and economic justice activist, published author, poet, and freelance writer.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.