The tale of the ever-elusive Tembisa 10 took yet another turn on Monday when Independent Media’s Piet Rampedi accused the Gauteng Health Department of holding the decuplets allegedly birthed by Moliehi Maria Sithole to ransom.
Piet Rampedi claims Gauteng Health abducted decuplets
Responding to a statement released by the provincial department on its role in the Tembisa 10 saga, Rampedi claimed that the decuplets were being held against Sithole’s will.
A frail, vulnerable & poor woman was abused & dehumanised by medical doctors, people who are supposed to care for her. Now instead of doing right by #GosiameSithole & giving the mother her #Tembisa10 babies, they’re playing politics & adding salt to injury. @GautengHealth pic.twitter.com/P2fNZbs8hY
— Mr Putin (@pietrampedi) November 1, 2021
Press Ombudsman brands Tembisa 10 story a ‘hoax’
Rampedi’s assertions came shortly after the Independent Media’s Press Ombudsman released a report, branding the Tembisa 10 story as a hoax.
The Ombudsman panel. comprised of Yogin Devan, Moegsien Williams, and Velie Oosthuizen, concluded that Rampedi, Editor at Pretoria News, had failed to apply the basic principles of journalism and thus, by publishing the fake news story, placed the entire media group’s reputation at great risk.
“In the haste to publish the story, Independent Media’s reputation was put at risk and the trust factor in media has been seriously compromised,’ the report noted.
The Ombudsman report completely clashes with the view of the media group’s chairperson Dr Iqbal Survé who, in a bizarre press briefing, claimed that the decuplets were birthed in June 2021 at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital and trafficked in an elaborate scheme that involved medical doctors and nurses.
The hospital, last week, released a statement in response to the wild claims, The state hospital unequivocally stressed that “none of our medical personnel has been involved in the antenatal, intrapartum, or post-natal care of a woman with eight or more babies in 2021.”
“We would like to inform the public that the spontaneous occurrence of quadruplets and higher order multiples is extremely rare. The natural incidence of quadruplets is estimated to occur in 1-in-600 000 deliveries while quintuplets probably only occur once in 15-20 million deliveries,” the hospital explained.