- Professor Richard Calland says the country needs whistleblowers to combat corruption.
- He says whistleblowers should be incentivised to come forward and disclose information.
- A not-for-profit organisation which was launched earlier this year has assisted 87 whistleblowers.
The not-for-profit Whistleblower House, which was launched in February this year, has already assisted 87 whistleblowers.
Former SAA group treasurer and whistleblower Cynthia Stimpel revealed this during the State Capture Commission Conference in Johannesburg on Thursday.
The Whistleblower House was launched as a civil society intervention to protect those who speak out against misconduct and give them access to all the services they may need.
Stimpel said:
She said they were currently working with a legal firm to set up a handbook for whistleblowers, focusing on how they could "save and protect themselves".
She added that the handbook would be ready "shortly."
The organisation is chaired by Stimpel, former deputy commissioner of SARS Ivan Pillay, with ethics expert Liezl Groenewald, High Court attorney Martha Ngoye, and former Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) chief operating officer Ben Theron as directors.
Stimpel also spoke about the plight of whistleblowers, saying some had lost their homes, jobs, as well as current and future income.
"I can attest to that personally," she said, adding that some had even taken their own lives or been assassinated after speaking out.
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The University of Cape Town's Richard Calland said the country needed whistleblowers to combat corruption and protect human rights. But he added that whistleblowers were sometimes assassinated and often harmed in other ways.
"Whenever anything goes wrong in an organisation, whenever there is wrongdoing, corruption, sexual harassment, there is always a witness," he said.
'They won't be around next time'
Calland said whistleblowers should be incentivised to come forward and disclose information.
He added that in the past, he was against the idea that there should be a reward for a whistleblower, fearing that people would have the wrong motivation for coming forward.
But years later, circumstances suggested that the country needed to shift its view on incentives, he said.
Earlier this month, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who chaired the State Capture Inquiry, called for greater protection of whistleblowers and said he feared they "won't be around next time" should there be a repeat of state capture.
Zondo was speaking at News24's On the Record summit in Johannesburg, where he delivered the keynote address.
"The commission has heard a lot of evidence from whistleblowers. If we do not look after these whistleblowers during state capture, they won't be around next time. Others will look at how whistleblowers were treated and will not come forward. A lot of people are reporting corruption. We must assure that they are properly protected," he said.
"Because, to ensure that we fight state capture and corruption, we need to assure that there are people who report it, and that the police are capacitated. I can assure that the judiciary stands ready to do its part to deal with state capture and corruption. The judiciary stands ready, that the Constitution of this country is respected."