Africa-Press – South-Africa. Exactly a year ago, on a chilly morning, Babita Deokaran dropped her 17-year-old daughter at school in Winchester Hills, a suburb in Johannesburg South.
The civil servant wasn’t famous or well-known outside of her tight circle of family and friends. She was a diligent worker in the Gauteng health department’s finance division and her life was pretty straightforward before she stumbled upon a trove of documents that would ultimately cause her demise.
A few weeks before her death, Deokaran painstakingly uncovered how Tembisa Hospital – a state facility that’s supposed to serve the medical needs of the Tembisa community – had become a money printing machine for a well-organised tender mafia.
Special report |
Why Babita Deokaran was murdered
She wanted to stop hundreds of millions of rand from being paid to fake contractors who massively inflated their invoices for delivering goods that could have been bought for a fraction of the price elsewhere.
She alerted her superiors in the department, who pretended to care. “I am just worried that the guys in Tembisa are going to realise we are not releasing their payments and know that we on to something. Our lives could be in danger,” was the chilling message to her boss a few days before her murder.
She had also connected the dots to powerful ANC players in Ekurhuleni. Her superiors wanted nothing to do with politics. “Eish, I just don’t like dealing with politicians, u know,” responded CFO Lerato Madyo.
Eish, indeed.
Because while Deokaran was uncovering the fleecing of millions of rand to corrupt networks, someone inside her department alerted the syndicate she was about to expose. She became their target.
Someone in the syndicate – maybe one person, maybe a group – recruited hitmen from the KwaZulu-Natal killing factory. They wanted her dead.
Babita Deokaran was offered no protection or support from her colleagues or department in her quest to clean up Gauteng’s health procurement system. She was alone in pursuing a “new dawn”. When she died in a hail of bullets, sprayed into her car after returning home from dropping her daughter at school, Deokaran was the solitary obstacle in the way of the Tembisa tender vultures.
PODCAST |
The Story: Whistleblower Babita Deokaran’s murder and what she tried to uncover
News24’s investigations team decided to pursue this major injustice shortly after her death. It was clear that her death was not a random hijacking gone wrong, but a targeted assassination. We wanted to know why Babita Deokaran had to die.
Because that’s what good journalists do; they walk towards, not away from, a grave injustice. Even at a high cost to themselves.
Earlier this year, after pursuing numerous sources and avenues, we managed to lay our hands on a trove of emails and cellphone correspondence from Deokaran’s electronic devices. We spent months piecing together the work she had done in the weeks before her death.
Shockingly, the authorities only seemed interested in the six hitmen who were allegedly paid to end her life. The mastermind(s) remain at large.
And this is where our readers come in: had it not been for our almost 60 000 News24 subscribers, we would not have been able to tell the story of Babita Deokaran’s death. Their monthly subscriptions of R75 enable us to have a growing investigations team that can dig deep and search for the truth the authorities want to hide.
‘Our lives could be in danger’: Inside Babita Deokaran’s R850m ‘fraud’ probe
We can lock them away in their office – literally – for weeks, to read and search and dig and talk and meet and connect all the relevant dots. There are, unfortunately, more Babitas out there and a subscription to News24 will strengthen our ability to tell their stories with the same level of depth and compassion.
In honour of Babita, we have decided to make free to all readers our investigative stories in our “Silenced” series between 18:00 and midnight today.
We have been humbled by your response to our investigation.
“Great investigative journalism! Hats off to News24! Thumbs down to the officials – SARS, NPA, SAPS. Wake up! The job’s been done for you. Do your jobs now! At least some things still work in SA. Thanks to private enterprise,”
wrote subscriber RidUsOfTheANC.
Sybrand said: “Brilliant work News24! Investigative journalists will still save SA. Well done for exposing a nest of vipers that can fleece a HOSPITAL and still sleep at night. Sies man!”
Grannyjan called it “world-class journalism” and Ubuntu365 commented: “Well done for continuously chasing this investigation, News24, now that is what journalism is for”.
Vee wrote: “Well done News24. Have no fear in exposing the truth. Society is behind you.”
These words keep us going when days are dark. Are we sometimes scared? Of course. We are just human, but we are driven by a burning desire for justice, and if we don’t tell the stories of courageous whistleblowers like Babita, who will?
Until next time,
Adriaan.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
