The South African government annually spends hundreds of millions of rands offering VIP protection to its entire bloated executive. But whistleblowers brave enough to come forward to testify about the horrific corruption that plagues the public sector, and the violence that often accompanies it, are too often left out in the cold. It is obscene that the government reportedly spent over R1.3bn over the past five years to protect about 70 members of the executive — most of whom don’t face any clear threat — while leaving vulnerable those who put their lives on the line by exposing the violence and rot that denudes the public purse.
It has been four years since the then chief financial officer at Tembisa Hospital, Babita Deokaran, was gunned down after exposing widespread corruption amounting to over R2bn at her place of work. Six men were finally convicted for that murder at least. But those that worked in the shadows and plundered a place that is supposed to provide healthcare to the most vulnerable in our society, have yet to face the music.
It took four long years to make some arrests and at last some have now been charged. Fast forward to 2025 and the Madlanga Commission – which by its very nature was set to expose corrupt and dangerous elites within the ranks of the SA Police Services – and another whistleblower has met a violent end. Marius van der Merwe knew the threat he and his family faced.
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Perhaps, he thought that his anonymity as ‘Witness D’ before the commission looking into criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system would mitigate that risk. It didn’t. Within days of giving evidence, he was gunned down in his own driveway in a murder startlingly similar to Deokaran.
This week, cooperative governance minister Velenkosini Hlabisa described Deokaran’s murder “a shame on the nation”. He said the Protected Disclosures Act is “insufficient”. In fact, it is not.
Like everything else the law is sufficient. It is a poor workman that blames his tools. Hlabisa said that the cost of speaking out should not be the loss of life. And yet it is exactly what happened to Van der Merwe, to Deokaran, to Makana municipal whistleblower Jeff Budaza and many others, including auditors, whose work threatens the operations of criminal networks.
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