‘Protect whistle-blowers, or lose fight against graft’

South Africa must protect its whistle-blowers or lose the fight against corruption.

The country will not win the war against corruption if it does not actively and adequately protect whistle-blowers, the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said this week.

“Corruption has become embedded in South African society and it robs the country of the ability to provide its citizens with employment, services and social support by damaging economic activity and growth and siphoning off taxes,” said Foundation CEO Piyushi Kotecha.

“On 1 November, South Africa lost an upstanding citizen when Athol Williams fled the country in fear for his life after implicating 39 individuals and companies at the Zondo commission into state capture.

“In an open letter to South Africans, Williams, who recently left his work as a research fellow at the University of Stellenbosch’s Centre for Applied Ethics, cited the August 2021 murder of Gauteng department of health official Babita Deokaran as one of the reasons behind his decision to leave the country,” Kotecha said.

Deokaran was one of several witnesses in a Special Investigating Unit investigation into more than R300-million in tender fraud, concerning protective equipment for healthcare workers during the Covid pandemic.

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Williams, who grew up on the Cape Flats, is among the few people to have earned five master’s degrees from five top global universities, among them a BSc in Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, and an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

He is a published poet, and founder of Read to Rise, a non-governmental organisation that promotes literature, and of the Cape Flats Book Festival.

In October 2019, Williams exposed alleged corruption at management consultancy Bain & Company, where he was working.

He gave evidence that the company had withheld relevant information from the Nugent Commission investigating irregularities at the South African Revenue Service.

It was reported in December 2019 that Bain had attempted to buy Williams’ silence, and the Nugent Commission found that Bain did not make full disclosure to it.

– Citizen reporter