Kempton Park Hospital: Facility ‘has a long history of neglect’

The Kempton Park Hospital that mysteriously closed in 1996 was nearly invisible to the public behind the high fences and overgrown grass.

At the gate, visitors apparently pay bribes to security guards to let them into the hospital premises where they either go ghost haunting, explore the grounds or play airsoft tournaments.

The gardens were overgrown and decorated with broken pieces of furniture scattered outside while the building inside was left empty.

Inside the hospital, it was dark with graffiti on the walls and the floor covered with shattered glass from the broken windows and other building rubble.

The equipment left untouched at the hospital was now vandalised or missing. In the morgue, the fridge doors were missing and the concrete table used to perform autopsies was damaged.

There was a room with old hospital files that covered the floor completely.

Democratic Alliance (DA) shadow MEC for health in Gauteng Jack Bloom said the hospital had a long history of neglect.

“There is no money in the near future to fix the hospital or build a new one for the area, which was desperately needed to take the strain off the Tembisa and Edenvale hospitals,” he said.

“They did budget at one stage to demolish the hospital as they claimed it will cost more to fix it than to build a new one.”

Bloom said he has tried to get the department of health interested in a private/public partnership. “There are private players interested in the property and have offered to either fix the hospital or build a new one in the area,” he said.

“The provincial government has neither the interest nor the expertise to pursue this, so nothing will happen there.”

Yesterday, DA Gauteng spokesperson for social development Bronwynn Engelbrecht was denied access to the premises while conducting an oversight visit.

Engelbrecht said the hospital had the potential to serve the community, whether it be a clinic or a centre to help drug addicts.

“From what we could see, everything is in wreck and ruin,” she said.

Engelbrecht was told to present a formal letter from the department of public works and infrastructure to access the property.

“I told them as a member of parliament, I was allowed to enter any state-owned building, but they refused,” she said.

Engelbrecht said when she questioned the security about ghost tours and airsoft tournaments, they denied having knowledge of it or bribes to access the property.

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