Deokaran’s legacy is mandate to fight corruption: Hlabisa

Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa with Babita Deokaran’s family and friends at Stellenbosch University’s Bellville campus in the Western Cape on December 9, 2025.

Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa says the legacy of slain whistle blower Babita Deokaran is not only a cautionary tale, but also a mandate to fight corruption.

Hlabisa addressed the inaugural Deokaran Lecture, which was held at The Anti-Corruption Centre for Education and Research at Stellenbosch University’s Bellville campus in the Western Cape.

She was assassinated outside her Johannesburg home four years ago.

At the time, Deokaran was Chief Director for Financial Accounting at the Gauteng Health Department.

Her exposure of corruption, including halting over R850 million in suspicious payments at Tembisa Hospital made her a beacon of integrity.

Hlabisa says, “This administration will standardise whistleblower protocols and support the whistleblower protection bill and its witness protection reforms, and also the measures to be enforced by the Auditor-General’s material irregularity issues when the certificate of debt is issued.”

SYSTEMIC ISSUES

Whistleblower advocate John Clarke says the country has not confronted the systemic issues that Deokaran exposed.

Clarke says South Africa suffers from greed even at the expense of other people’s lives.

He says, “I think that Babita’s death and the death of others that have died just for this year, people that have been speaking out, that their sacrifices would be honoured if they see this filtering out in society more widely so that we take responsibility of honestly acknowledging the first step is to admit that we have a problem. Not that government has a problem. Greed is incentivised, silence is rewarded, and integrity is punished, and we’re never going to have any recovery without that honesty.”