Image: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers / IOL Graphics
IN the wake of the assassination of Marius van der Merwe, the whistleblower known as “Witness D” at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, political and civil society voices have issued fierce condemnations and urgent demands for decisive action to protect those who risk their lives to expose corruption and organised crime.
Van der Merwe, a Brakpan-based member of the security industry and former official of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD), had recently given testimony before the Madlanga Commission — the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference, and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System.
He was murdered in what many, including Build One South Africa (Bosa), have described as a targeted killing. His death, they said, was a brutal reminder that South Africa was failing the very people who stood up against wrongdoing.
Former ACDP MP and founder of Voice to Parliament (VTP), Marie Sukers, made a powerful call for immediate legislative and executive action. In a statement this week, she condemned the state’s failure to safeguard van der Merwe, whose identity, she argued, was “inadequately protected” and who “becomes another in the long list of whistleblowers outed to criminals, who was not hidden well enough nor received sufficient state safeguarding”.
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