South Africa has failed to protect its whistleblowers. For decades, whistleblowers have been left jobless, isolated and ostracised, facing the full fury of the powerful interests they seek to denounce.
This is precisely what former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo sought to correct in his recommendations following the 2018 State Capture Commission. Zondo found South Africa’s primary legislation protecting whistleblowers, the Protected Disclosures Act (PDA), wholly insufficient in practice. This sentiment was not new and has been echoed by whistleblowers, civil society, and academia ever since.
Heeding Zondo’s call, in April the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DOJ) released the new Protected Disclosures Bill, open for public comment until 14 May. However, we cannot afford to mistake ambition for arrival — not when whistleblowing in South Africa continues to mean putting your life at risk.
As such, the Legal Resources Centre, the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and Open Secrets have developed a collective position paper endorsed by the Civil Society Working Group on State Capture (CSWG). The paper provides critical insight into reforms needed to strengthen whistleblower protection in South Africa that go beyond the current proposals in the new Bill, ensuring stronger protection, better support mechanisms, and incentives to encourage reporting.
Whistleblowers must, foremost, be granted clear and explicitly stated legal rights as per the rights...
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