“I don’t think that I will come out of my own situation alive. I know powerful people hate me and they want me dead, and I live any day as the last one on Earth and have already prepared my family members for it. My health is also taking a knock, but I am not complaining. I still maintain and believe that I did what was right.
“Talking to my 10-year-old son the other day, about what will make me happy about his life in future, he asked me: ‘Baba do you think you [are] about to die? Mama told me that people who killed your friend want you dead.’
“I could not hold my tears or come to a better position to explain properly to him. I have now accepted my fate. The end for many whistleblowers under the current regime is prison, death or self-imposed exile. All of them are painful ends, but now seem inevitable for many, if not all.”
These words were posted by Thabiso Zulu, an anti-corruption campaigner and whistleblower, in reaction to the news that another member of the growing whistleblower community, Athol Williams, had fled South Africa in fear of his life.
But for the fact that they are both South African citizens, their respective stations in life in one sense could not be more different: Zulu is an anti-corruption activist from KwaZulu-Natal with but a high-school education. Williams is highly educated, and formerly a senior lecturer in business ethics at the prestigious University of Cape Town.
In another more vital sense, their stories are...
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