A deadly silence — SA’s failure to protect whistleblowers and human rights defenders

Speak up and lose your life. That is the risk faced by whistleblowers and human rights defenders in South Africa.

Five years have passed since Babita Deokaran was killed outside her home in Johannesburg. While the hitmen who carried out her killing have been convicted and sentenced to between six and 22 years in prison, those who ordered it remain free.

Deokaran’s death in August 2021 sparked public debate over the protection of whistleblowers in South Africa, and in its 2022 report, the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture recommended that whistleblower legislation be strengthened. 

Yet little has changed. In 2023, the Department of Justice issued a discussion document proposing reforms for South Africa’s whistleblower protection regime. Despite submissions from organisations like Amnesty International South Africa hoping for urgent reform, it took three years for the draft Protected Disclosures Bill to be released for public comment in April 2026. From here, the Bill faces parliamentary debate, approval by both houses, and presidential sign-off – a timeline with no clear end in sight.

Deokaran’s story is not an anomaly. It is part of a documented pattern of intimidation and lethal violence against those who expose corruption and defend human rights in South Africa: 

• Sindiso Magaqa was shot in 2017 after raising questions about corruption in the uMzimkhulu Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal and died from his injuries. 

• Forensic investigator Cloete Murray and his son Thomas Murray were killed during an ambush on the N1 in Johannesburg in March 2023. At the time they were working on liquidations connected to State Capture cases.

• Mpho Mafole, an Ekurhuleni official who raised concerns about a R1.8-billion chemical toilets tender, was killed in 2025 after being followed for hours. 

• Martha Mani Rantsofu, an accountant at the Emfuleni Local Municipality, was shot and killed outside a tyre shop in Vanderbijlpark in March 2026.

These are not isolated tragedies. They are part of a recurring pattern, one that demands urgent institutional action and accountability.

The starting point

So how do we ensure this happens? The starting point is a strengthened legislative and policy framework

Clear terminology is essential for an adequate policy response. A whistleblower is a person who discloses wrongdoing, corruption, fraud, or abuse of power, often in an organisation where they work. While South Africa has an existing legal framework, there are still significant limits and shortfalls in the practical implementation of mechanisms, as exposed in the Zondo Commission. 

The Protected Disclosures Bill is currently before Parliament, and represents an opportunity to strengthen protections. Amnesty International South Africa has engaged with this process once again, making a submission and continuing to advocate for a Bill that offers meaningful, enforceable protection.

The submission highlights key concerns and recommendations to strengthen whistleblower protections, including a clearer human rights framing, mandatory risk assessments, a whistleblower protection fund, and consistent penalties for intimidation and harassment across legislation.

Whistleblowers and related persons, including their family members, who are subject to retaliation should be able to access comprehensive and effective remedies, financial and otherwise, covering all direct, indirect, past and future consequences of detriment suffered. 

Human rights defenders

Whistleblowers are a type of human rights defender, and there are many of them in South Africa fighting corruption and human rights abuses. Human rights defenders include community organisers, journalists, lawyers, and activists. 

The most corrosive element of the threats, attacks and killings of human rights defenders is not only the violence itself but the impunity that follows. Enforcers may be prosecuted, masterminds almost never, as we have seen in Deokaran’s case. Families have anniversaries and hardly ever get answers. The broader public receives an unambiguous message: exposing corruption may cost you your life, and those responsible will probably never be held accountable.

This is not solely a failure of policing. It reflects an absence of political will. The consequences extend far beyond individual cases. Corruption diverts resources from clinics, schools and municipal services. Each killing or silencing of a person who seeks to interrupt that diversion deepens the cost suffered by communities across the country.

This is why the government must finalise and enact the amendments to the Protected Disclosures Bill to ensure that it is robust, adequately resourced, and capable of implementation, and not merely a statement of intent. 

Beyond this necessary whistleblower reform, human rights defenders who fall outside of this category also need to be recognised as a distinct category of persons requiring legal protection, through legislation that takes into account the unique risks that they face, rather than incidental inclusion in a broader reform agenda. 

South Africa currently does not have a legal definition of human rights defenders and therefore has no dedicated protection policy or legislation 

While whistleblowers are a category of human rights defenders, others, such as environmental activists, land activists, community organisers or journalists, to name a few, do not fall under the Protected Disclosures Bill. These defenders face unique, heightened risks because of the work that they do, taking on powerful state and non-state actors, and there must be established mechanisms to prevent and respond to attacks, threats and killings, and to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable. 

In the meantime, the killings continue. The legislative framework remains incomplete. Commemoration, on its own, is not a response. What is required is political commitment, legislation that protects, institutions that act, and accountability that reaches those who profit from corruption as well as those who pull the trigger.

People who tell the truth about corruption are not collateral damage. They are essential to the fulfilment of the rights established in the Constitution. It is time the state treated them accordingly. DM