South African woman who claimed to have given birth to ten babies lied, says official report

Gosiame Sithole, from Pretroria in South Africa, claimed to have given birth to ten babies and that they were stolen from her - in fact she was never pregnant at all.

A photo of Gosiame Sithole faking pregnancy (Screengrab/ Pretoria News/Independent Media/Twitter)

A South African woman’s claim to have given birth to a record-breaking ten babies was a lie, according to a report by the country’s acting public protector, Advocate Kholeka Gcaleka.

The strange saga started in June 2021 when Gosiame Sithole claimed to have given birth to decuplets on 7 June 2021 at Steve Biko Hospital in Pretoria, South Africa. What followed included lies, bizarre claims of human trafficking, and allegations of wrongful confinement.

A formal complaint based on these claims was lodged by Tebogo Edward Tsotetsi, Ms Sithole’s customary husband, with the Public Protector’s office.

In a 57 page report involving multiple interviews, published 30 December 2022, Ms Gcaleka concluded there was no evidence that Ms Sithole had been denied access to her babies. In fact, there was no evidence that she had even recently been pregnant or given birth.

According to records she also had also not been to Steve Biko Hospital since 2014, when she had given birth to twins.

The report also dismissed complaints that claimed Ms Sithole had been wrongfully confined for mental healthcare observation, that social services had wrongfully removed her two twins to a place of safety, that government officials had encouraged Mr Tsotetsi to report Ms Sithole missing so that she could be arrested, that she had been wrongfully arrested, and that the provincial government had violated her privacy by releasing her medical records.

The report found that Ms Sithole’s admission for mental health observation “may have been warranted”. Furthermore, Ms Sithole herself had asked that her two twins be taken from the care of Mr Tsotetsi’s family worrying they were not being properly looked after while she completed a long stay in hospital.

Regarding the missing person complaint and alleged arrest the report found Mr Tsotetsi had made the decision himself to report Ms Sithole missing. She was also never arrested - just voluntarily taken to the police station to resolve the missing person enquiry.

Lastly, the report found that a public statement by the Gauteng Provinicial Government that there was no evidence Ms Sithole had recently been pregnant did not violate her privacy. It was a reasonable response to various false allegations circulating about the story.

The strange story had quickly unravelled after the initial announcement mainly because there was no sign of the babies anywhere.

However, it was kept alive by Ms Sithole claiming that she was being denied access to her babies. Backing her up was Piet Rampedi, editor of Pretoria News, and Iqbal Survé, Executive Chairman of Independent Media which owns the paper. Supported by a gynaecologist later outed as a fraud, Dr Mpho Pooe, they claimed the decuplets were real but had been stolen as part of a vast human trafficking conspiracy.

According to this wild conspiracy theory Steve Biko Hospital, other hospitals in the area, and government departments were in cahoots to steal babies from vulnerable patients, especially black women. The babies were supposedly being used in withcraft, cosmetics, and stem cell research.

The current real world record holder for the most babies in a single birth is Halima Cissé, a Moroccan woman now 27, who who gave birth to nine children in Mali in 2009.