The lives of people who try to stop or expose corruption are in danger and must be protected. (Getty Images)
mena new opinion piece by Claire Keeton, “How to fix fear, the new world riven by polycrisis” (March 6, TimesLive), he quotes Mark Swilling, co-director of the Center for Sustainability Transitions at the University of Stellenbosch: “We must maximize what we can do to solve our own problems and reduce our dependence on the state.”
Middle class citizens with the means to do so in sinking boreholes, installing solar panels and so on. However, if they were to impose their own laws to deal with crime and violence, the state would effectively abdicate its responsibility as the guardian of our constitutional democracy. The litmus test is whether the ruling party knows how committed it is to protecting and supporting whistleblowers.
It has been two and a half years since working with the whistleblower. The threshold of entry is Mandy Weiner’s book launch The Whistleblowers in October 2020. To promote the book, I asked my journalist friend, Joanne Joseph, to do a panel discussion, Springing the Trap: Developing a Culture of Whistleblowing..
During the discussion, Mandy said: “We have to stack the cards against whistleblowers if we are going to fight corruption.”
“It’s a life you don’t want for your worst enemy,” said Thabiso Zulu who, after surviving an assassination attempt, never stayed in one place for long, letting thugs contracted by politicians finish him off for sneaking around. corruption in local government in KwaZulu-Natal.
“Rosemary did not have anyone senior enough inside who could have had the influence to help her recognize the failure of the pension fund managers to ensure billions in unclaimed benefits were paid,” said Catherine Hunter, Rosemary Hunter’s sister, who blew the whistle on fraudulent maladministration. from the pension fund.
“South Africa has been ten years behind the rest of the world in all our anti-corruption laws and policies,” said anti-corruption lawyer Colette Ashton. “If whistleblowers are protected, we will be able to check all the boxes on the road to better governance in South Africa.”
I said, “There is a subterranean aquifer with a lot of damaging information about corrupt activities still waiting to be revealed. If we just keep the ‘springs’ of water flowing to cleanse our society of this corruption”.
At that time I had imagined that protected sources of information would flow to create a flood of more dangerous disclosures. Catalyzed by the Zondo commission on state capture, I believe whistleblowing will free the state and the ANC from capture and restore the social contract provided for in the rule of law.
Guaranteed protection, support, compensation and reparations for victims and revenge, I believe the trickle will become a torrent. On the contrary. Babita Deokaran, a finance officer in Gauteng’s health department, was killed, as she was a witness in an investigation into fraudulent contracts for personal protective equipment. Witnesses were prevented from speaking.
In addition, the National Assembly failed miserably in its oversight function, as Ilse Salzwedel’s book states. Permitted Looting: How South Africa’s Parliament Failed show.
A year after the panel discussion, Athol Williams, who had testified at the Zondo commission, went to safety abroad. Police whistleblower Patricia Mashale, believing the corrupt police want to kill her, has also left South Africa.
ANC secretary general Fikile Mbulula is up against former Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter, who on eNCA blew the whistle on the failure of the ruling party authorities and elites to deal with organized criminals who stole from Eskom.
The lives of those trying to stop or expose corruption are in danger, as evidenced by the murder of court-appointed liquidator and corruption investigator Cloete Murray and her son Thomas.
Today is the seventh anniversary of the murder of my friend and client Sikhosiphi “Bazooka” Rhadebe, chairman of the Amadiba Crisis Committee a day after Human Rights Day in 2016. His family is still waiting for the criminal justice system to arrest him.
By failing whistleblowers, the state has failed us all.
What about citizens who rely on state agencies to investigate, prosecute and prevent such incidents? What can we do to strengthen the country’s law enforcement apparatus to turn the toxic spiral into a culture of systemic corruption?
The lasting inspiration from the panel discussion came from Colette. The point is that the protection and support of whistleblowers is the most efficient and effective place in the anti-corruption policy platform.
“International experts on anti-corruption enforcement have shown that providing incentives for people to come forward and report corruption is the most effective way to detect financial crimes,” he said. “It uses more valuable anti-corruption resources than criminal investigations of complex cross-border corporate schemes designed by professional teams.”
So why does the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) not have a team attached to the Special Investigations Unit dedicated to protecting, supporting and encouraging whistleblowers?
Lack of money cannot be an excuse. The Asset Forfeiture Unit has recovered millions. The money sits in the fund in the treasury.
Colette explains in her dissertation, Dismantling the Machine, that recruitment for corrupt networks occurs by “horizontal co-optation” where “a symbiotic relationship is formed between politicians, business and organized crime”.
But this secret corrupt relationship is fraught with conflict, and the parties experience many temptations to betray one another.
“We just need to make it easier to do it, by providing a strong incentive for one of them to get information safely,” he said. “This incentive is not currently in our law, and this needs to be changed.”
Why don’t we see statutory changes to get a true counter cycle of whistleblowers based on ongoing corruption?
Because criminal syndicates know that a normal culture of whistleblowing would be dangerous for their business. These thugs seek to prevent, disrupt and undermine the state’s sincere efforts to deport and prosecute their crimes.
Colette explains: “Corrupt actors operate as rational individuals, maximizing utility, responding to extra-legal incentives and disincentives provided by corrupt principals to comply with informal rules that allow and undermine systemic corruption.”
It is in retaliation against whistleblowers that this is starkly proven, confirmed by whistleblower stories.
In a normal society, citizens who see wrongdoing should report it to the authorities. But when the authorities and ruling party elites are combined into a thugocratic machine, they have removed the legitimate custodian rights of the social contract between citizens. Anarchy leads to tyranny.
It is a common misconception that the social contract is between citizens and the state, as social ethics teachers Christine Hobden and Heidi Matisson argue.
“One of the main features of the social contract that is often overlooked is between citizens rather than between citizens and the state. That is, in the view of the social contract, the state and its political structure and authority can be morally justified not because we have signed a hypothetical contract with the state to obey its laws, but because we have signed a hypothetical contract with each other as citizens. It is our duty as citizens to honor the terms of the contract. It is the duty of the state or political authority to do something if we do not.
Today is Human Rights Day. Even if elected representatives break their oath of office to uphold the Constitution, citizens don’t need permission to show them how. The constitution in effect details the terms of the social contract. The Preamble, the Founding Articles (Chapter 1) and the Bill of Rights (Chapter 2) leave little doubt as to what our rights, duties and obligations are to each other. Predicated on that foundation, the rest of the document explains what the state must do responsibly.
Human rights do not belong to the state, but to the people.
It is the duty of citizens to ensure that human rights gain meaning, which is what whistleblowers do. The fact that he was persecuted for doing so is an indictment of the state.
I believe that the togocracy can be dismantled. Mashale has fled to safety out of the country, but he has left a chorus of whistleblowers. He will never stop. Too much has been sacrificed. Too much at stake.
John GI Clarke is a social worker, author and justice monitor.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.