Journalists Jeff Wicks and Mandy Wiener said that South Africa could do more to protect whistleblowers who expose corruption at public and private entities.
Wicks and Wiener were panellists at a discussion on the role of whistleblowers at the premiere of News24's investigative documentary Silenced: Why Babita Deokaran was murdered.
Wiener, the author of The Whistleblowers, said people who exposed corruption "were pushed to the fringes of society" and did so at the expense of their safety and psychological well-being.
She said the legislative overhaul of the Protected Disclosures Act, which governs whistleblowers, and accountability for perpetrators of corruption were among the solutions for endemic corruption in the country.
She said:
Aside from the legislation, we need to make sure that our criminal justice system functions and that murder is not an alternative. There are many instances in which whistleblowers are unemployed and pushed to the fringes of society. We also need a societal revolution about how we treat whistleblowers. They should be protected and celebrated.
Wicks, a News24 investigative journalist, has produced a series of exposés titled Silenced. The articles...
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