The woman who pleaded guilty to having posed as a doctor for three months at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital will not go to jail.
Magistrate Itumeleng Balepile of the Orlando Magistrate’s Court yesterday fined Fikile Busisiwe Khanyi, 26, R5 000 (or 18 months in jail), which was suspended for three years. Khanyi had posed as a doctor from last November and was arrested on January 25.
The court found, however, that she had not attended to any patients.
She told the court she was working for a journalist from the Daily Sun called Simphiwe Sithole, who had wanted her to get stories for him from the hospital.
“The mere telling of a lie is not fraud unless it brings some sort of harm, which is known as prejudice,” the magistrate said as he passed the sentence. He said the main question that needed to be asked was whether anybody suffered potential prejudice as a result of Khanyi’s conduct.
The magistrate also said the witnesses who testified against her, Thembinkosi Ngema and Jacob Mokwaledi, from the hospital, suffered no personal loss, but the institution had.
Her sentence was based on the fact that she had disturbed the peace and harmed the hospital’s reputation.
Balepile said the evidence did not show that she had attended to any patients. “If she had attended to patients, it could have merited a more serious sentence,” he said.
The magistrate said that when Khanyi testified, she had not answered the questions satisfactorily, as they had had to be asked over again before she could answer them properly.
Her credibility as a witness put her “in a tight spot” as if she had not wanted to incriminate herself. This gave a bad impression of her as a witness.
“Her version is false and nobody in their right mind would believe what she had said. She is found guilty of fraud,” said the magistrate, who added that he took into consideration her personal circumstances.
Khanyi is unemployed, has a 10-month-old baby, and the father of the child is unable to take care of them as he is disabled. The magistrate said the welfare of the child had to be considered, but it was important that “the sentence must serve the purpose it is intended to serve”.
He told Khanyi that economic factors were not a valid defence to commit a crime.
Balepile said similar offences were being committed. “If the offence is prevalent, the court intervenes,” he said. The magistrate said he wanted to pass a sentence that would discourage and send a message to the community about such offences.
“You did not interact with patients; that’s why you escaped imprisonment,” he told Khanyi.
She nodded in agreement and retreated to the back of the court to evade the press.