The Gauteng Department of Health has disowned famous South African TikTok medical practitioner, Dr Matthew Lani, while a medical student that he allegedly stole his identity from has filed charges of identity fraud at Tembisa Police Station.
Lani, who has over 280 000 followers on the platform, is known for the medical advice he shares on TikTok, where he claims to be a Wits Medical School graduate and the “youngest” doctor to own a “pharmaceutical company in South Africa”.
In a statement on Monday, the Gauteng Department of Health said Lani had managed to misrepresent himself as a worker at Helen Joseph Hospital, from where he shot most of his content from.
“Lani managed to weave his way into the system, pretending to be in the employ of Helen Joseph Hospital, where he moved around the hospital corridors curating content for social media,” the department said.
Further investigations by the department revealed that Dr Sanele Zingelwa, which Lani claims is his real name, belongs to a second-year medical intern at the Tembisa Provincial Tertiary Hospital.
The real Dr Zingelwa has since opened a case of identity fraud.
Meanwhile, the University of Witwatersrand denied that Lani had ever been in its books.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he claims that he studied medicine (MBBS) at Wits between 2014 and 2021. However, Wits does not offer an MBBS degree, but it does offer a MBBCh degree.
“Based on the names presented to the institution and the facts on hand, the university cannot find any person who graduated by the name of Matthew Bongani Zingelwa or Sanele Zingelwa in recent years.
“We are requesting ‘Dr Matthew Lani’ to retract any such claim with immediate effect,” it said.
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