Johannah Phenya is the owner and managing director of an IT company in Johannesburg.

She met her husband Marumo in 2001. They later married and had three children.

Marumo worked for South Africa’s Department of Correctional Services until 2008, when he joined Johannah’s company as its business development manager. Over the next decade they began to specialise in providing IT security services, and clinched a number of government contracts.

Two years ago they won a lucrative state tender with the Department of Home Affairs. Government rules specified that 30% of the value of the deal had to be sub-contracted. Unbeknownst to them at the time, their partner company was linked to a senior official who sat on the committee that approved the contract.

They soon began to question their partner company’s IT skills and suspected the documents it had submitted were fraudulent.

The Sunday Times newspaper in South Africa later revealed that their partner company, which had won a subcontract worth over US$2 million, was owned, on paper, by an illiterate former domestic worker who lived in a township backyard room.

In June 2021 Johannah and Marumo reported their concerns to the director general of the Department of Home Affairs, providing him with a dossier of evidence, and later cancelled the subcontract. That decision would cost Marumo his life.

Their disclosures led to an internal investigation and disciplinary proceedings being instituted last year against implicated officials. Shortly before the hearings began, Johannah received a chilling call, which they recorded: “We have been contracted to kill you and your husband – whoever we get first, we are going to kill. You decide how you want to handle this.”

The assassins requested an urgent meeting. They said they had received a down payment for the contract killing, implying that if the Phenyas paid them enough, they would call off the hit. Instead, the Phenyas took the recording to the police.

The police traced the call to a secure estate, obtained security footage of the men entering the gate, and identified them. They assured the Phenyas the men would be arrested. But no arrests took place.

Soon after Johannah began to testify against the implicated officials, the assassins struck. Marumo died in a hail of bullets when he stopped at a suburban traffic light minutes from their home after dropping their children off at school. His assailants fired 10 shots at his vehicle before fleeing on foot.

The assassins fired on his car from both sides, expecting Johannah to be in the passenger seat as usual. But that day she had other errands to run, which saved her life.

Johannah was devastated to lose her husband and terrified the killers wanted to finish the job. Strange cars visited her home in the middle of the night and followed her children to school. But she was also determined that his death should not be in vain, and continued to testify at the hearings. Since then the main implicated official has resigned, and criminal proceedings are underway.

But Johannah is deeply disappointed that, despite strong evidence linking several men to Marumo’s murder, a year later the police have made no headway in arresting the perpetrators and appear to have lost interest in the case.

Like Johannah, her children were traumatised by their father’s death. They don’t go to shopping malls or play soccer with their friends like other children do, fearing they could be killed. Her daughter recently refused to attend her Matric dance, even after her mother promised to arrange police protection.

They find it hard to comprehend what their parents did. “Sometimes they get so angry, and say: why did you guys do that? And I say: we did that to protect you in future, so that you can have jobs. If we let these guys get away with corruption, it means there won’t be anything left for you, in the future.”

Even so, she finds herself struggling to justify it to herself. “I told them you have to stand by your truth. But at the same time, the truth has cost them their dad. Looking at the kids, every morning, when they long for their dad, it’s so painful. It has cost me my husband. Especially when you’ve been with someone for 21 years and he’s no longer there. It’s heavy. It’s difficult.”

She points out that killing whistleblowers and witnesses has become the norm in South Africa, featuring briefly in the news, then forgotten. “After a week, it’s done. You move on to the next thing,” she says. “It’s heart breaking. These are human beings. These are fathers and sons. Every day I wake up and say: thank God I am still here.”

Like many other whistleblowers in South Africa, she feels the government’s assurances of protection and support amount to little more than lip service for the cameras. “It’s all just talk. There is no protection,” she says. “If you are a whistleblower in South Africa you are on your own. You have to beef up your own security, or you will be killed.”

Photo credit: Iam Mukhari Hlulani