Thabiso Zulu blew the whistle on corruption involving fellow members of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). 

His uncompromising commitment to exposing the looting of municipal resources, police brutality and whistleblower victimisation has made him the target of attacks, death threats and a failed assassination attempt.

Zulu’s story is also one of multiple failures of various state entities to protect him from harm.  He lives in hiding, in fear of his life. 

In 2016 Thabiso Zulu received a sheaf of documents from a friend and fellow activist, Sindiso Magaqa, who was previously the secretary-general of the ANC Youth League. By then Magaqa had returned to his hometown, Umzimkhulu in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where he was elected as a local councillor for the ANC. 

The dossier he gave to Zulu contained documents suggesting that funds for building a memorial hall in Umzimkhulu had been looted by council officials. Zulu shared the dossier with law enforcement agencies. 

Magaqa demanded a forensic audit into how the funds had been spent. In the months that followed, two councillors were assassinated. One of them had been a staunch supporter of Magaqa’s call for a forensic audit. In 2017, Magaqa was ambushed while driving home. He was shot and badly injured, and later died in hospital. 

The press in South Africa later reported that the rifle and vehicle used in his assassination were allegedly bought by a police crime intelligence unit, using the police’s secret services account. Two of the suspects arrested in that case were police officers and a third was a registered police informant. 

Thabiso Zulu became a target for assassination himself when he stood up at Magaqa’s funeral, which was televised live and attended by senior ANC leaders, and declared that his friend had been killed for revealing corruption inside the party. 

Police fail to act

Shortly after this, Zulu testified at the Moerane Commission of Inquiry into a wave of political murders in KwaZulu-Natal. Zulu told the commission he had evidence implicating senior ANC politicians and municipal councillors in massive looting and corruption that went far beyond the Umzimkhulu memorial hall funds. He said the law enforcement officials he had provided with evidence failed to act against politicians and politically connected municipal officials. 

Soon afterwards he was warned that hitmen had been hired to kill him. He informed the Public Protector, who was investigating allegations that the memorial hall funds had been looted.

The Public Protector, an independent ombudsman with the power to investigate improper state conduct, asked the police and State Security Agency (SSA) to conduct a threat assessment. The SSA found that Zulu and a fellow whistleblower urgently needed state protection, and recommended that they be provided with bodyguards. These ought to have been provided by the police’s protection services division. 

The remedial action recommended by the Public Protector in her report issued in 2018, which is binding on state officials, was for the police to provide Zulu with bodyguards and the president to reprimand the minister of police for failing to do so. Instead of providing Zulu with protection, the minister went to court to set aside the Public Protector’s findings. 

This left Zulu high and dry, and vulnerable to attack. 

Assassination attempt

In 2019 Zulu led a peaceful anti-corruption march. The next day he received a warning that he would be assassinated. A day later he was walking down the street when a vehicle pulled up alongside him and the occupants opened fire. He was injured but survived. Despite being admitted to hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, he discharged himself, fearing the hitmen would finish him off there.

The police appear intent on harassing him rather than providing him with protection or investigating his attempted murder. 

In 2020, two days after leading another anti-corruption protest march, seven police officers descended on his home. He was allegedly pepper sprayed, badly beaten and arrested, spending the night in jail. During the arrest, his family members were allegedly insulted and threatened with rape.

He was charged with incitement to cause public violence, but the state declined to prosecute due to a lack of evidence. Fellow activists said the charges were trumped up in retaliation for his work as an anti-corruption crusader and social justice campaigner, and were aimed at intimidating him. 

He vowed to continue to speak out against corruption and injustice. 

The following year, in October 2021, Zulu was arrested again. This time he was charged with assault. 

Sinister abuse of power

Veteran KwaZulu-Natal human rights defender and researcher Mary de Haas, who has been supporting Zulu for more than two decades, described his arrest as part of a pattern of sinister abuses of power by the minister of police that poses a serious threat to whistleblowers.

During his arrest, Zulu was allegedly coerced to retrieve and activate both his mobile phones. They were taken by arresting officers, who said they would download the contents. 

“This places anyone who has contacted Zulu, especially those providing information about corruption, including among senior politicians and police members, at great risk,” De Haas said.

Although Zulu is forced to constantly change the locations where he sleeps at night to evade assassination by hit men, he refuses to be silenced. 

“There will be no retreat – that would be a betrayal of those who have sacrificed their lives for this struggle,” he told Blueprint for Free Speech. “If they want to silence me, they must kill me.”