Telling the truth shouldn't be a death sentence

SOUTH Africa loves a commission. We watch them like national crime dramas. We gasp, we tweet, we analyse and then we move on. But the people sitting in those witness boxes do not get to move on. Their danger does not end when the cameras stop rolling. For many of them, that is exactly when the danger begins.

- NYANISO QWESHA

The Madlanga Commission has become the country’s most explosive public stage. For the first time, we are hearing sworn testimony that stitches together a story South Africans have always whispered about: extortion syndicates embedded in municipalities, politically connected security operators, rogue police officers, and criminal networks that operate comfortably inside our state institutions.

What the Commission is revealing is not ordinary corruption. It is the violent criminal capture of the Republic.

And beneath all this spectacle lies a quieter, truth. In South Africa, telling the truth can get you killed, and the state does not protect the people who do it.

Ask the family of Babita Deokaran, murdered for flagging suspicious payments in the Gauteng Health Department. Ask about Lieutenant-Colonel Kelebogile Tshepha, now remembered as a symbol of integrity paid for in blood. Ask the whistleblowers now living in safe-houses, moving from couch to couch, or fearing the footsteps outside their doors because they dared to honour the Constitution before the Constitution honoured them.

The witnesses coming forward at the Madlanga Commission aren't political insiders with private bodyguards, offshore bolt holes or expensive legal teams. They are nurses, municipal clerks, metro cops and or provincial officials. People with children to raise, bond payments to meet, and an expectation that the state the very state they serve will keep them safe.

It doesn't.