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The Democratic Alliance (DA) has asked the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) to investigate the theft of a 100-metre-long copper pipe from the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe hospital in Kimberley. This comes after the Northern Cape Health Department failed to open a criminal charge of theft, demonstrating zero political will to combat corruption within the provincial health sector.

The theft occurred more than five months ago, with parts of the province’s only tertiary facility still without hot water as a result.

Based on a parliamentary reply, it is suspected that the thieves pretended to be contractors and cut the pipe into pieces, to remove it as rubble. The incident was reported to provincial security, who met with facility management, and remains under internal investigation.

The pipe was in a restricted area, for which the key is reportedly kept in the workshop to ensure proper control. This points to serious security and access control breaches, and potential insider involvement. It is therefore incomprehensible as to why the department has chosen not to involve law enforcement in this matter, unless it is willfully protecting certain individuals or contractors.

Currently the nation is gripped by the Tembisa hospital saga, where unrestricted looting of state resources collapsed an entire hospital. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident, and it is not unique to Gauteng, and must serve as a wake-up call to the Northern Cape.

The plundering of copper pipe, at a busy tertiary hospital, in an area protected under lock and key, at a facility protected by security guards, is a massive red flag, and must be treated as a priority.

The DA has submitted available information on the incident to the SIU, with a request that it be urgently investigated.

Corruption and gross financial mismanagement have already brought provincial health care to its knees. We will not sit back and watch as public health care in the Northern Cape is further pillaged in broad daylight, by self-seeking and connected syndicates who are robbing the sick of health care, at the expense of connected cadres who are getting rich off critical hospital infrastructure.

Issued by Isak Fritz, MPL - DA Northern Cape Provincial Spokesperson on Health