South African TV news features Blueprint Africa Whistleblowing Prize winners

2024 Blueprint Africa Whistleblowing Prize winner Sarika Lakraij-Naidoo tells eNCA about the impact coming forward has had on her life and career.

South African whistleblowing prize winners Sarika Lakraj-Naidoo and Dorothy Mmushi both feel whistleblowers have been thrown to the wolves in their country, despite legal protections that exist.

Interviewed by lead anchor Francis Herd on South Africa’s leading 24-hour news channel eNCA after winning the 2024 Blueprint Africa Whistleblowing Prize, they related their harrowing ordeals after exposing large-scale corruption.

Mmushi was a forensic investigator at South Africa’s power utility Eskom. After she uncovered criminal syndicates colluding with Eskom officials to defraud the utility out of billions of rands with massively inflated invoices, she was subjected to acts of intimidation including being arrested on trumped up charges and targeted for assassination.

Lakraj-Naidoo was the financial director of the City of Johannesburg’s Public Safety division, which includes the city police and fire departments, who exposed corrupt contracts worth billions of rands. As a result, she was subjected to death threats and intimidation, then hounded out of her job.  

One of the suspect contracts she exposed was for fire trucks that were never delivered. “The city of Joburg paid millions of rands for fire trucks,” she told Herd. “On TV now, I’d like to ask: where are the fire trucks? Because we paid for them. So god forbid, if there’s a fire. Who’s going to respond?”

She has little faith in any of the state protections offered to whistleblowers in South Africa, especially when, as in her case, there was collusion between senior administrators and politicians.

“Unfortunately there has been no protection whatsoever. I mean, a security threat analysis was done by five different units of the South African Police Service, [yet] my security was withdrawn. And now I'm actually a sitting duck. I had to relocate my family.”

In South Africa, even anonymous whistleblowing hotlines are not safe. “They trace your voice. They trace everything about you,” she told Herd. “We have our phones tapped. I don't have any freedom – and I will never have freedom for as long as I choose to live in South Africa. That’s what we live with on a daily basis, alright.”

Mmushi told Herd she was disappointed that the suppliers whose criminal activities she uncovered at Eskom were blacklisted but the law has not taken its course. “I’ve never heard of any arrests being affected, so for me it seems like it’s a lost battle. And instead, the person who was trying to investigate these matters was the one being victimised.”

She said whistleblowers were crucial for the success of any forensic investigation. But in hindsight, she would have preferred to stay anonymous. “I believe that if anyone has information that they feel they want to disclose regarding corruption in their organizations, they should do it anonymously.”

“It’s quite unfortunate because with a lot of organizations have whistleblowing policies, but those policies are not effectively implemented. Those policies do not even include how you protect whistleblowers.”

She bemoaned that in South Africa “the fact that whistleblowers are even victimised by the police is quite unfair. So there need to be amendments done to the regulations that protect protected disclosures.”

The full interview is available to view at enca.com.