Every year on 23 June we remember whistle-blowers around the world who have braved threats to their lives and livelihoods to expose corruption on both small and large scales. We also reflect on what we, as a society and as individuals, are doing to make the environment for blowing the whistle more enabling and encouraging.
On the commemoration of this year’s World Whistleblower Day, we focus our attention on whistle-blowers who were instrumental in the work of the state capture commission. They came from different sections of government and business, and told of their unwavering courage, and large personal and career sacrifices to a commission that has since advocated for increased protection of such individuals.
Phillip Dahwa
His was one of the most revealing of whistle-blower testimonies before the commission, possibly because of its moving nature. Dahwa told the commission that because of his stance against the late Dudu Myeni, who served as chairperson of South African Airways (SAA) at the time that he was head of procurement, he lost his job and had had financial difficulties since.
In the days surrounding his testimony, Dahwa was to lose his home as he had been unable to keep up with bond payments.
He told the commission that when he refused to partake in irregular procurement processes sought by Myeni and her counterpart in SAA subsidiary SAA Technical, Yakhe Kwinana, he was subjected to humiliation and xenophobic remarks by both. Over time his position at SAA became untenable and Dahwa left the company without any immediate job prospects. At the time of his testimony, he had still not secured a new job.
Cynthia Stimpel
A better-known whistle-blower in the SAA state capture narrative, she has been an advocate for whistle-blower protection for several years and was instrumental in the establishment of advocacy group Whistleblower House.
She joined SAA in 2006 and was head of financial risk and deputy to the group treasurer during the term of Myeni. Like other state-owned entities in the country, it was not uncommon for SAA to periodically venture into large capital projects for which it would require financial assistance such as loans. When the airline found itself in a debt situation in early 2015, a decision was made to develop a borrowing plan, for which Stimpel would be partly responsible. It was in the implementation of the plan that she experienced resistance from Myeni and some of the board members.
Like Dahwa, Stimpel would also face what she termed victimisation and efforts to edge her out of the company. Myeni’s board was pushing for financing to come from the Free State Development Corporation, while Stimpel’s research and analysis had led her to recommend another company. She too would eventually lose her job for resisting any part in irregular decision process in relation to this clash of opinions on procurement.
Stimpel is commonly asked to address whistle-blower-focused events across the country, speaking of her own experience and the urgent need for legislative change for whistle-blower protection.
Themba Maseko
Besides being one of the most known whistleblowers of the public service in the last decade or so, Maseko was also one of the few who made public his implication of former president Jacob Zuma in the state capture commission.
He testified in 2018 and was one of the first witnesses to provide insight into the relationship between Zuma and the Gupta family.
While Maseko was head of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) as well as being spokesperson for Cabinet, he was approached by Ajay Gupta, who at the time represented his family’s New Age newspaper and proposed a change in government’s print advertising outlook. Gupta wanted government advertising, for which the GCIS was the custodian, to be re-channelled to the New Age. It was worth around R600-million per annum at the time, according to Maseko, and it would have meant that this value of advertising – usually spread across several established print media outlets across the country – would go to only the newly established newspaper. When he refused to make this offer to the Guptas, Maseko was removed from his position and redeployed at the same level to a different department.
He told the commission that all his efforts to expose the inappropriate conduct of both Gupta and Zuma – the latter having called him while he was on his way to hear the proposition to tell him to “help these guys [Gupta] out” – he received no co-operation from the Hawks.
The commission was the first platform through which Maseko was able to fully expose the incidents that directly impacted his career in the public service. He has also written a book, For My Country, in which he documents these events and his struggles as a whistle-blower.
Frank Chikane
Perhaps one of the most prolific of testimonies before the commission came from former Presidency director-general (DG) Frank Chikane. He testified in November 2019, not only corroborating the testimony of Maseko regarding Zuma’s conduct, but also providing perspective into the experiences of senior public servants who witness corruption and abuse of power by politicians, but are either fearful of reporting it or in their courageous efforts to expose it, end up as victims of career sabotage.
Chikane proffered that, although there is provision in the code of conduct of the public service for DGs to ask for written requests from their political heads if asked to do something irregular, a lot of DGs went on to lose their jobs when they did this. In the case of Maseko, it was even more concerning, because it was not his political head that was threatening him with losing his job, but an outsider who did not have such authority.
He told the commission that although several former and current DGs may have knowledge of irregular conduct by their political principals, they fear the career sabotage that comes with exposing these. Even in a judicial process such as the commission, said Chikane, those individuals could not be guaranteed protection from victimisation.
The problem does not only occur in the public sector, but also follows those who venture into the private sector, who may find themselves blacklisted not for wrongdoing, but for exposing names of powerful persons and the incidents of irregularity that they may have been involved in.
Athol Williams
The story of Athol Williams is different from that of Maseko. While the corruption he has exposed involves a public entity, the South African Revenue Service (Sars), he himself was not a public servant when he came across it.
Williams was a consultant for Bain and Company South Africa, which is currently banned from doing business with the South African government owing to the corruption allegations revealed in part by Williams. He shared that he had been with Bain since 1995, when he joined the company as an intern, and noticed how things changed in 2010 when its new country head for South Africa, Vittorio Massone, arrived.
Massone worked to establish relationships with influential government and private sector leaders, one of whom was Zuma. It was on the back of this relationship he would build with Zuma over the next few years that he would seek to secure lucrative government contracts, one of the most well-known being with Sars.
Bain would provide leadership training for individuals earmarked to lead some of the state-owned companies, such as Tom Moyane who later became Sars commissioner in 2014 and Sipho Maseko who would be appointed CEO of Telkom in 2013. The training was allegedly organised with Zuma’s blessing, due to his proximity to Massone.
The vast amount of information that Williams revealed with respect to Bain’s relationship with Sars – which included a R164-million contract for restructuring the service – was very helpful to the commission and to the South African authorities in moving to impose sanctions against the company, which paid back the value of the contract with interests as ordered by the courts.
But Williams’ protection was not guaranteed and not long after his testimony before the commission, he fled the country out of fear for his security. He has continued to advocate for the protection and support of whistle-blowers, despite his own difficult position.
Martha Ngoye
The Special Investigating Unit is currently conducting a broad probe into corruption allegations relating to large-capital procurement projects in the period between 2012 and 2015 at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa).
Prasa, like several other state-owned companies, came under scrutiny at the state capture commission. Witnesses alleged irregularities ranging from those related to recruitment, to procurement and attempts to cover up and intimidate those willing to expose them.
One such individual whose career at Prasa ended due to her stance against such irregularities is Ngoye, the agency’s former head of legal services. Ngoye testified that the culture at Prasa under the leadership of one-time CEO Lucky Montana was such that large contracts would be entered into without legal advice from her department, but if these contracts encountered problems, her team would be roped in to help clean up.
When she began to protest against such conduct, she was victimised and her job was made hard. Ngoye supported the efforts of the board that took office in 2015, led by former North West premier and ANC leader Popo Molefe, to uncover the alleged corruption under Montana’s term. She led the legal team in negotiations with legal representatives of the agency in its North Gauteng High Court endeavour to reverse contracts mired in controversy, including the Swifambo locomotives contract (worth about R3.5-billion) and the Siyangena security infrastructure contract (worth about R5-billion).
She recently lost her bid for reinstatement to her position when the Labour Court of Appeal (LCA) overturned the Labour Court ruling that found in her favour over what she terms in her court papers as unlawful dismissal by the board that followed Molefe’s in 2017.
Ngoye told the commission that her team oversaw over 100 litigation matters involving Prasa. Her dismissal along with two other former executives in 2021 was a result of a board resolution that their positions were of a contract nature, and that in terms of Prasa’s policies, these contracts had reached the end of their terms.
The trio has argued, however, that they were permanently employed, and should not have been subjected to contract policy standards. The LCA ruling was that their quest was based on the incorrect legal prescripts, and so on the basis of a legal technicality, they lost.
