Real SA heroes: Whistle-blowers who gave their lives for justice

While the ANC is spending countless hours in debate – and countless taxpayer and ratepayer rands – in its campaign to change names of roads and places to honour our national heroes, we have a suggestion for them.

And that is: use the names of South Africans who are the real heroes of our democracy… and not just the ANC apparatchiks who symbolise the organisation’s drive to reimagine history.

Our heroes are our whistle-blowers – those brave and principled citizens who put their lives on the line to reveal the looting which is gutting our country.

Two names we’d like to see at the top of the heroes’ lists are Babita Deokaran and Eric Phenya.

Deokaran paid with her life after exposing rip-offs and corruption at the Gauteng department of health – dying in a hail of gunmen’s bullets outside her home after dropping her children at school. The “big fish” who ordered her killing have yet to answer.

ALSO READ: Whistle-blowers’ safety: Justice partially served in Deokaran’s killing

Phenya is less well known. Almost exactly a year ago, he died in the same way as Deokaran, three weeks after he laid charges against home affairs officials, alleging corruption in a multimillion-rand tender.

To date, nobody has been brought to book in his case, with authorities dragging their heels – a move his wife Johanna calls “justice denied”.

She says: “The police have pictures of suspects and phone numbers, the only thing remaining is proper investigation and arrest. I get a sense that the police – or at least some of them – work with the killers.”

The assassinations and the lack of follow-up by the cops will discourage other people who find themselves in a similar position to do the right thing. That means corruption will not only continue to fester, it will get much worse.

Let’s hope that people like Deokaran and Phenya did not die in vain.

ALSO READ: Whistle-blower pays ultimate price as killers roam free

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