Mzukisi Makatse was a grant officer at South Africa’s lottery commission. The commission administers funds generated by the national lotto and disburses grants worth about US$50 million every year to worthy charities.

Shortly before he was appointed, a new law gave the board discretionary powers to award grants to charities that hadn’t applied for them. Mzukisi soon learned that this so-called proactive funding mechanism was a way of repurposing the Lotto for large scale looting.

When he refused to comply with instructions from his managers to sign off on a proactive funding payment allocated to a music festival after he flagged it for possible corruption, he was fired.

Makatse wanted to make an example of this case to blow open what he believed was a much wider web of corruption enabled by the new funding policy. Instead he lost his job, his home and his car – and almost lost his family.

Makatse was born in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa and studied law at the legendary University of Fort Hare, which counts among its alumni several legends of the anti-apartheid struggle, including Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Oliver Tambo.

He initially worked as an official in the departments of justice and home affairs before returning to his home province to complete his law degree and then join the lottery commission.

Throughout his career as a public servant, he has always held the belief that those who exercise power should do so ethically and accountably. What he saw happening at the commission did not square with this belief. He felt that the proactive funding mechanism was being used to hijack charities and NGOs to corruptly funnel lotto funds to the commission’s executives and their cronies.

When Makatse was asked to sign off on a suspicious looking grant of US$400,000 allocated to a music festival in the Eastern Cape applied for through an obscure charity in another province 1 000 kilometres away, he refused.

“A colleague picked [up] this application as fronting and it was sent to our legal unit and to the provincial manager then to national office,” Makatse told the Daily Dispatch newspaper. “We flagged this application but nothing was done. Instead I was suspended.”

The grant was paid out a few days later.

Makatse reported his concerns widely. He wrote letters of complaint to his superiors at the commission, to the government department and minister its board reports to, and to parliament.

Instead of investigating his complaints, the commission subjected him to a disciplinary hearing. He was charged with gross insubordination for refusing to comply with instructions from his managers to approve the grant, and with gross insolence for blowing the whistle on what he saw as corrupt practices. When he took his concerns to the media he was slapped with further charges of divulging confidential information without authorisation. He was summarily dismissed.

Makatse paid a high price for blowing the whistle. After losing his job, he fell into depression. This played a role in ending his relationship with his fiancée, who is the mother of his three children. He lost his car and home, and was unable to pay his children’s school fees.

Makatse sued the lottery commission for breach of contract but after a protracted and expensive legal battle he eventually lost the case.

Makatse was one of several whistleblowers who exposed irregularities in how lottery funding was managed, often in partnership with the South African news agency, GroundUp. These included funds allegedly diverted to buy luxury homes and cars for board members.

Although Makatse suffered greatly thanks to his decision to blow the whistle, years later he was vindicated when South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit began to investigate suspicious Lotto grants worth over US$100 million – including the one he had flagged. As a result, a slew of luxury properties and vehicles belonging to Lotto bosses, their relatives and cronies were seized by the state and dozens of cases were referred for criminal investigation, with one conviction so far.

New leadership at the lottery commission is taking steps to stamp out corruption. According to GroundUp, these include reviewing the proactive funding model “which was at the heart of the looting”, physical inspections, and publishing monthly lists of awarded grants.

Recently Makatse’s personal circumstances have begun to improve. He has patched things up with his partner and lives with her and their children as a family again, and his legal practice is finding its feet.

Despite what he has endured, he has no regrets for blowing the whistle on corruption. “There has been positive change, and for that I am grateful,” he says. “I would do it again if I could.”

However, he believes South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, needs to do far more that pay lip service to protecting whistleblowers.

“Whistleblowing is the only realistic way to fight corruption. But in South Africa they are hunted down like rats or hounded out of their places of work,” he says. “When they are inevitably dismissed, criminal or civil cases are instituted against them to ensure that they are completely dead and buried.”

He wants the president “to show leadership. Talking about protection is not enough. We need action at the highest level, or whistleblowers will continue to be intimidated. In some instances, whistleblowers become literally dead and buried after being killed in a hail of bullets.”

Photo credit: Supplied by Mzukisi Makatse