The Cape Town Medi-Clinic has laid a charge of theft at the Cape Town police station in connection with missing medical records belonging to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Western Cape police spokesperson Captain Randall Stoffels said on Wednesday the investigation was ongoing and police were busy compiling statements.
He could not comment on whether the Sunday Times was implicated in the theft.
The allegedly stolen medical records are at the centre of a scandal that has erupted around the health minister’s alleged drinking habits.
On August 12, the Sunday Times published a story alleging she indulged in alcoholic binges while at the Cape Town Medi-Clinic two years ago for a shoulder operation.
Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya has called the story ”200% accurate”, while the minister has called it ”garbage”.
Makhanya said the newspaper had written to the minister, saying the onus was on her to explain why the documents and notes she was requesting should be returned.
He said as far as the Sunday Times was concerned, there was no reason to give her anything because the story about her drinking was true.
”The minister needs to tell us what it is in the story that is garbage,” he said.
”The story that ran on Sunday is 200% accurate.
”[It is] thoroughly, thoroughly researched. Everything is accurate.”
Makhanya said he was ”not saying anything” about whether the paper was in possession of Tshabalala-Msimang’s medical records.
On Tuesday, Tshabalala-Msimang said she would go to court to get her medical records back from the Sunday Times as a ”matter of urgency”.
Her spokesperson, Sibani Mngadi, said the minister believed the Sunday Times was illegally in possession of her records.
”All of us have read the story. The story has said they are in possession of medical records.
”We want to believe that they are not lying, at least not on that issue,” he said on Tuesday.
”It’s certainly a violation of the National Health Act.”
The paper refused to hand over documents relating to the story by a deadline the minister imposed for Tuesday afternoon.
Makhanya said the onus was on the minister to explain the basis on which she was demanding the documents.
The hospital laid the charge on Tuesday.
‘Booze binge’
All this follows the weekend front-page report, under the headline ”Manto’s Hospital Booze Binge”, in which it is alleged the minister consumed excessive amounts of alcohol while in hospital for shoulder surgery two years ago.
The Sunday Times also reported that Tshabalala-Msimang suffered from an alcoholic liver disease, which led to her requiring a liver transplant earlier this year.
”Just three months ago, Tshabalala-Msimang received the gift of life from a teenage suicide victim whose family donated their child’s liver,” wrote the Sunday Times.
”Within hours of the operation at Donald Gordon Medi-Clinic in Johannesburg, doctors said the minister had been diagnosed with auto-immune hepatitis, and that the cause of her cirrhosis was not alcohol.
”However, the Sunday Times can reveal that many top medical experts at state and private institutions, who refused to be named as they feared retribution from the health ministry, said speculation was rife in the profession that she suffered from alcoholic liver disease.
”Many of these experts said the only reason she got the liver was because she was the minister of health. Had it been another patient of her age in her condition, she would not have qualified,” reported the newspaper.
The newspaper also claimed that the minister drank bottles of red wine and whiskey when she was admitted to the Cape Town Medi-Clinic in 2005 for a shoulder operation.
It alleged that she forced staff to buy alcohol for her, often late at night. — Sapa