Tuesday this week (23 August) marked a year since Babita Deokaran was murdered outside her home – made a target, it seems, for being a public servant of exceptional integrity and courage.
A year on, our officials – investigating and enforcement authorities – can tell us little as to how this terrible tragedy occurred. Unofficially, media investigations indicate that Babita had uncovered and halted more than R850m in suspicious payments to Tembisa Hospital, earning her dangerous, politically connected enemies.
That Babita would act so fearlessly – looking to safeguard public monies intended for public healthcare – is unsurprising. After all, she had demonstrated courage and integrity time and again, acting as a whistleblower and witness in multiple corruption probes.
In all of the coverage of state capture, the associated corruption and those who used public office to secure personal enrichment, what is sometimes eclipsed are those public servants of exceptional courage and integrity, who served South Africa in the most extraordinary way imaginable. That they are cannibalised, their lives and service taken, may be the highest price that state capture extracts from the public.
South Africa is so much poorer for the death of Babita; poorer still for the absence of reckoning and the fear that must stalk all those public servants who act bravely and rightly.
Issued by Helen Suzman Foundation