Johandri Wright receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant number 115581), the NWU and the Faculty of Law. All errors and viewpoints are the authors' own. The author is affiliated with the North-West University, Faculty of Law and is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the NRF SARChI Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability.

Every person in South Africa has the right to a functioning local government that can provide basic services such as clean water, electricity and sanitation. But corruption has left much of this sphere of government unable to fulfil its role.

The watchdog organisation Corruption Watch, which is the South African chapter of Transparency International, received 5,094 reports of corruption in local government from 2012 to 2020.

Most of the disclosures were by whistleblowers in the offices of the municipal managers and the police departments. Whistleblowers are people who report actions that are illegal, fraudulent, criminal, or corrupt – often within their own organisations. They often find their lives at risk and irrevocably changed as a result. They sometimes lose their jobs or even get killed.

Moss Phakoe, a councillor in the Bojanala Platinum District Municipality in North West province, was shot in 2009 after exposing corruption by councillors and officials.

Babita Deokaran, a key witness in the investigation of an allegedly corrupt multi-million rand tender in Gauteng province, was shot dead in August 2021.

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