The blue Ferrari had been driven fewer than 400 kilometres. It was bought in April 2022 for just over R11.1 million. On Wednesday, when an online auction closed shortly after 11am, it went for R10.1 million, and for the first time a tangible piece of the alleged Tembisa Hospital looting was turned back into cash for the state to hold.
The man it is linked to, businessman Hangwani Morgan Maumela, has never been charged with a crime.
That gap is the story. More than five years after a Gauteng health official flagged suspicious payments out of Tembisa Hospital, and four years after criminal investigations began, the state has become very good at taking things away from the people it suspects. It has yet to show it can put any of them in the dock.
How the car was sold
The 2022 Ferrari SF90 Stradale was among luxury vehicles preserved in September 2025, when the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) obtained Special Tribunal orders over assets it says were bought with money irregularly paid out by the hospital. The SIU, a state body that investigates corruption in public institutions and sues to recover losses, puts the alleged looting at Tembisa at about R2 billion.
On 13 August, Special Tribunal judge Bernard Ngoepe authorised the SIU-appointed curator, Jacobus Gideon Louw van Wyk, to sell the car for no less than R9.5 million, TimesLIVE reported. The proceeds go into an interest-bearing trust account, to be used to maintain other assets under curatorship with SIU approval. The curator may not use them for his own fees.
The curator's argument was simple: a stored supercar is a cost, not an asset. Storage alone ran to about R5,000 a month, and insurance had to be kept up.
The Maumela family, through the MHR Maumela Family Trust, fought the sale. It argued that the Ferrari was holding or gaining value, pointed to two sworn valuations in July of R10.2 million and R10.165 million, and cited an offer of R10,999,995 from Fouche Motors, according to its appeal papers. It accused the curator of dishonesty and asked that he be removed. The tribunal dismissed that bid with punitive costs.
The family then went to the Pretoria High Court on an urgent basis to stop the auction while it sought leave to appeal. The court dismissed the application. According to the SIU, it found the tribunal's order was interim and was not automatically suspended by the appeal. The family's application for leave to appeal had been argued but not decided when the auction closed.
So the car sold for more than the tribunal's floor, but less than the best offer the family put before the tribunal, and well below the estimated market value of about R14 million cited in reports of the auction.
Two systems, two speeds
The Ferrari explains why the state can move against Maumela's assets and not against Maumela.
The SIU works in civil law. To preserve or recover assets, it must persuade the tribunal on a balance of probabilities, meaning that its case is more likely than not to be true. A criminal conviction requires proof beyond reasonable doubt, built on evidence that a court will admit. As the Hawks put it to IOL in June, the two standards are not the same.
The civil side has been busy. In September and October 2025, the tribunal granted orders preserving about R900 million in assets linked to what the SIU calls the Maumela syndicate. A car dealer in Emalahleni was arrested in June 2026 after the SIU said he would not co-operate with an order to hand over a Bentley allegedly linked to Maumela. The Sunday Times reported in October that the SIU is paying for the security guards stationed at Maumela's Sandhurst property.
The criminal side has been quiet. In April, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi told Parliament that no charges had been brought against Maumela, and said information supplied to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) still had to be turned into admissible evidence. In August, National Director of Public Prosecutions Andy Mothibi told Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) that the Hawks were still investigating. In July, the NPA said the docket would go to the Director of Public Prosecutions for a decision once the investigation was complete. It gave no date.
Maumela, whom media reports describe as a nephew of President Cyril Ramaphosa by the president's previous marriage, is presumed innocent. He has not been convicted of anything, and his family is contesting the curator's handling of his assets in court.
The woman who saw it first
None of this began with the SIU. It began with Babita Deokaran, acting chief financial officer in the Gauteng Department of Health. In the weeks before her death in August 2021, she had flagged about R850 million in suspect payments out of Tembisa Hospital, Daily Maverick reported. She was shot outside her home after dropping her daughter at school.
Gunmen were arrested quickly. Four years later, eNCA noted that whoever ordered the killing had still not been identified.
The pattern is a familiar one in South African corruption cases. The money trail is mapped, assets are frozen and sold, and politicians call for arrests. Corruption Watch and Public Interest SA demanded action in July, and DA MP Ian Cameron said in October that criminal accountability had yet to reach the central figures. The question of who answers for the crime stays open.
What R10.1 million is, and is not
R10.1 million is real money. It is also about half of one percent of what the SIU says was taken from the hospital, and it is not going back to Tembisa. It will sit in trust until the civil case ends, and part of it will pay for keeping the rest of the seized fleet safe.
Tembisa Hospital serves one of Gauteng's largest townships. The people who queue there did not get a Ferrari. They got an alleged R2 billion hole in the budget meant for their care, and an investigation now in its fifth year.
On Wednesday, a buyer drove away with the car. The Hawks have still not said when, or whether, they will take a docket to a prosecutor.
