What’s really behind the rise of the fake doctors and qualifications?

Fake doctors have the power to cause incredible harm, even if they are doing good work in real life. But making up their qualifications is a bad thing.

According to Sanam Naran, a counselling psychologist and founder of Conscious Psychology, people claim to have qualifications they do not have because of “a need to be more credible”.

Naran said this dishonesty allowed these people to get more opportunities than they would ordinarily get.

“For example, with Matthew Lani, claiming he is a medical doctor got him a lot of TikTok followers and opportunities that he ordinarily wouldn’t have. He just rose to fame because he had this credibility of being a medical doctor,” she said.

“So, in essence, it’s just people’s way of manipulating and being dishonest.”

Lani dispensed medical advice and recommendations

In his videos on TikTok, Lani dispensed medical advice and recommendations.

Among other topics, he shared “expert” knowledge on HIV prevention and management.

Lani’s credentials were called into question early last month. Several institutions, including Wits University and the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), distanced themselves from him.

Lani’s TikTok account had amassed 294 000 followers, but it has since been banned.

The Economic Freedom Fighters Western Cape has called for the resignation of Democratic Alliance (DA) proportional ward councillor Abdulkader Elyas after claims about his alleged bogus medical qualifications surfaced in the media.

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On his LinkedIn profile, the Cape Town councillor claimed to have studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT) for a bachelor of business science in actuarial science in 2015 and 2018, as well as for a medical degree from 2013 to 2018.

According to UCT, Elyas did not obtain these qualifications. HPCSA also confirmed Elyas does not feature on the register for health practitioners.

Repeated calls to the DA for comment were ignored.

Unisa denied conferring honorary doctorates

On Tuesday, the University of South Africa (Unisa) had to deny conferring an honorary doctorate on Malawian socialite Pemphero Mphande, Malawian musician Patience Namadingo as well as “a certain Mansoor Sharif Karim”, who claimed to have received honorary doctorates from the university in 2020, 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Mphande had supposedly received his degree for his humanitarian work and took to social media to share his achievement.

ALSO READ: TikTok ‘Dr Matthew Lani’ refuses to shed light on qualifications

According to Unisa, these alleged recipients were also not among candidates considered and approved for the awarding of honorary doctorates.

Mphande, who is apparently known as a humanitarian, writer, philanthropist, political activist and entrepreneur, said he was contacted by some people who had been awarding honorary doctorates on behalf of Unisa.

“This ceremony was organised and conducted by the same people who have been doing this for years. If Unisa is denying this today, either they are a part of the scam or they, too, are being scammed. I would be happy to work with Unisa to get to the bottom of this,” he said.

‘People managed to believe their own lies’

Naran said people managed to believe their own lies, whether it was a little white lie or an extreme one.

“There are more harmless lies and there are more harmful lies. In the same way someone might tell a white lie and tell it very easily and believe that white lie, it can be said the same for those who tell extreme lies,” she said.

ALSO READ: Charges against ‘TikTok doctor’ Matthew Lani dropped

“As the public, we need to do our checks if there is somebody who is claiming to have a certain qualification,” she said.

“If we want to verify their credibility, if we want to consult them for medical reasons, we should also do our research on Google or check with these institutions if they studied there and they are credible.”