The Sunday Show - Sarah Burger: The political victimisation of SA’s truth tellers…

Fall-out from the bombshell dropped by General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the dangers of whistleblowing in South Africa are back in the spotlight. On the latest Sunday Show, journalist Chris Steyn speaks to Forensic Attorney Sarah Burger about the killings, character assassinations and income destruction of whistleblowers who expose politicians and the politically connected. “I believe that a lot of the prominent whistleblowers in South Africa have been politically targeted. And that is why they sit 10 years on without any movement in those matters and without, for instance, larger accounting firms being held accountable. So there is a lot of political interference.” Burger says one of the reasons there is a lack of reforms to protect whistleblowers is to ensure instead that corrupt politicians and their associates stay protected. “Absolutely, it is not in their interest to stop feeding…” Burger also describes the horrors being endured by her and top Labour Lawyer Bradley Conradie after they had spent years reporting and exposing malfeasance and corruption at Fort Hare University. “…last year in 2024, shortly before the ANC and the elections and the campaigning took place, myself and Bradley were arrested in a militarised fashion, discredited, intimidated, embarrassed - and all of the good work that we did there over four and six years now hangs in the balance.” Despite currently fighting an epic legal battle for professional survival, Burger urges whistleblowers to keep exposing corruption..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview .Chris Steyn (00:01.754)Welcome to this Sunday Show with me, Chris Steyn. Unfortunately, Neil De Beer cannot join us today, but I've just spoken to him and he has asked me to thank all the viewers for your messages of support and for your prayers. He hopes to be back soon, especially to talk about that report in recent days that fingered him as spearheading the ANC Must Fall movement.With me, though, is Sarah Burger, forensic attorney, who knows only too well how horrific the consequences of telling the truth can be. Welcome, Sarah.Sarah Burger (00:44.13)Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.Chris Steyn (00:47.226)First, for our viewers who do not know you, tell us where you fit in when it comes to whistleblowing.Sarah Burger (00:55.072)Okay, as you said, I am a practicing attorney and I work in forensics as well. I'm a director of a company called Horizon Forensics who were tasked with investigating serious fraud and corruption at the University of Fort Hare. I did this with a colleague of mine, Bradley Conradie, who's also a partner at the law firm that we work for, BCHC. And we exposed many scams at the Fort Hare University, but probably one of the most prominent is the alleged ghostwriting team that assisted the premier of the Eastern Cape, Oscar Mabuyane and other politicians in the Eastern Cape, purportedly with shelf degrees and allegedly to move it over to a PhD. That same professor that assisted him as well was also investigated for alleged theft of five million rand through a business of his that he signed off and authorised and contracted with the university for. So that's the more prominent. And last year in 2024, shortly before the ANC and the elections and the campaigning took place, myself and Bradley were arrested in a militarised fashion, discredited, intimidated, embarrassed. and all of the good work that we did there over four and six years now hangs in the balance. So that is how it all happened, but it all started pretty much in around 2018. So it's been years of reporting and exposing malfeasance and corruption at Fort Hare.Chris Steyn (02:44.432)Just the other morning, I woke up to a message from a whistleblower asking me to pray for her safety. You know who I'm talking about. It's not safe for her to go on air with me. I'd like you to describe for me the concept of a whistleblower in South Africa. It's a little different, isn't it?Sarah Burger (03:05.398)It is very different. And I think that South Africans have an idea of whistleblowers that they are only employees at businesses or in organisations that leak documents or testifying hearings. And that is not the traditional landscape that we find ourselves in in South Africa, because it can be that public official that exposes malfeasance. It can be a private company where an employee stumbles across some wrongdoing by someone or a CEO and exposes them. But it is also ordinary citizens and ordinary citizens that stumble across information in the private sector and the public sector and they expose that. And what we see a lot of nowadays is forensic investigators like myself and Bradley who get exposed. You're tasked with investigating one thing and you stumble across glaring irregularities and you are faced with a choice that you have to expose it because it's in the greater interest of the country. I think, you know, I'll just share this with you is that I recently spoke with Johann van Loggerenberg, who is the well-known SARS whistleblower. And he had a very good analogy of what he believes is a whistleblower. And he describes it as two people walking along a road. Person A is walking on the left-hand side of the road and they're walking towards a huge abyss, a big hole in the road. Person B is on the right-hand side of the road and there's a busy road in between. Person B looks over and without any hesitation crosses the busy traffic and prevents person A from falling into the hole. He does so without any regard for consequences to his own life without thinking that he may be knocked over by a bus or a taxi. He does it because it's the correct and the courageous thing to do without the thought of the consequences. So I believe that in the South African context cannot be limited just to employees. It's to any citizen that takes those kind of risks to expose for the greater good.Chris Steyn (05:29.786)Walk me through some of the lived experiences and the real impact on whistleblowers that we are both deeply aware of and have spoken about in private.Sarah Burger (05:44.632)You know, in my journey, and I'm going to just personalise it a little bit, I've come across some serious trends of what a whistleblower will experience. And these are nothing in life can actually prepare you for these things. Firstly, employment is the greatest casualty. It's the norm to have professional reputational harm and to be discredited, for your character to be assassinated, for intimidation by the people that you expose in serious and senior positions, political or otherwise State-owned entities, CEOs, that still have the capital power to sway and enforce and intimidate so that you are unemployable. The biggest part that whistleblowers that I speak to regularly, belong to a… a group called the ACM, the Active Citizens Movement. And often what you see is that the individuals in that group say they feel so isolated. They feel alone. Their own friends, their fairweather friends that were there for them previously when things were going well, abandon them because it's easier not to deal with the pain of seeing the friend go through a real life challenge. They also don't want to be associated, especially when it's a huge political exposure type of whistleblowing, they don't want to be implicated. They don't want to be targeted, even though they know their friends are. There are of course many examples of this, but financial ruin is one of them - and business is not associating with you because you're an exposed person. But one thing that we can all agree on in that group and whistleblowers at large is that you didn't take a decision to go through financial ruin or to be intimidated or embarrassed or have your character assassinated. You took the decision because it was the correct thing to do. What we have working against us as whistleblowers is that the media will come in and they will discredit the whistleblower. They will bolster the CEO or the political party.Sarah Burger (08:10.51)They will protect them. But the whistleblower, the true whistleblower has to stand their ground. They have to remember why they decided to make that decision to blow the whistle in the beginning. And it comes at a great cost. But at the same time, those same people that cry on a daily basis because they're being intimidated, embarrassed, lost their employment, lost their income, have come to very fundamental points in their life. And I've mentioned it previously when we've done interviews, is that there's a level of clarity in your life that comes into fruition. And that clarity is, sorry, I get a bit emotional about it, but you have a thought in your mind when you're sitting alone in a quiet contemplation about what is important to you. And it becomes so clear that nothing material, nothing financial, no popularity contexts bring you happiness and clarity. Your family, the things that you love the most, that's what you need to lean into. The fact that you are courageous enough to expose the wrongdoing is what you need to lean into. We can't take any of these things with us anyway when we die. So the most important things in our moments of solitary solitude and thinking are those very things that keep whistleblowers sane at end of the day. It's love and integrity.Chris Steyn (09:52.026)Now there are whistleblowers who will never recover their reputations or their livelihoods. But then some of them feel that they are still lucky not to have lost their lives as many have.Sarah Burger (10:09.228)Yes, I mean, there are different types of assassinations for whistleblowers. And I've mentioned the first type, which is the most common, is that you will have whistleblowers like Cynthia Stimple and Johann von Loggerenberg, who will be character assassinated. So they take away people that have got decades of rich experience in governance and exposing corruption and they defame them.And I mean, think people must remember this. It's not one person that you're fighting when you expose malfeasance because malfeasance is and corruption is not a one man show. It's a multi man show. And, you know, there are various levels of them in an organisation that will help each other and feed into that. So there's a lot at stake for them when a whistleblower comes forward and says: Well, there's the following corruption and you were the ultimate person that signed it off. Well, there were a lot of people that helped that person get that contract in front of them to sign it off. There were a lot of enablers. And so when a whistleblower comes forward, like a Cynthia Stimple or a Johann von Loggerenberg, he's not fighting one person. He's not simply saying, well, there you have it. He's fighting a system and that system is going to kick back. And that is why you have these disgusting examples of them being character assassinated, when in fact we should be praising them and saying thank you as South Africans for protecting us and for exposing this and stopping the machinery in its place. Of course, we learn more recently about that auditor, forensic auditor in Johannesburg that was murdered. Babita Deokaran is a name on many people’s minds for exposing tender fraud corruption in Johannesburg in a hospital as well. She lost her life. You know, and the reality is, is that there are so many examples like this. mean, Babita paid the ultimate price. There are current people, for instance, the SETA whistleblowers that are too afraid to expose their faces because they know the repercussions of coming out.Sarah Burger (12:35.054)They're unemployable, effectively, and it's wrong. The Lottery whistleblowers. I know one of the Lottery whistleblowers who is an attorney. He exposed corruption in the Lottery Commission and lost his cushy job and his nine to five with holidays and big salaries, etc. To expose this, where is he now? He is struggling on a one-man band practice to make ends meet. And it's wrong. So we are living in a society where I think that people are so disillusioned when they open up the newspapers, you know, it's SARS, it's hospitals, it's Lottery commissions, it's local government, it is national government. And you kind of just see the people comment and say, gee, this is terrible, you know, and blame it on somebody, but we're not standing in solidarity and supporting these people who effectively should be praised and should be on the boards. They should be running companies, private companies should be coming to them and say, please, I need you on my board. Instead, we shy away from them and we abandon them. And they left carrying the can for years and years.Chris Steyn (13:53.87)Let's talk about the biggest whistleblowing case currently that of the KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.Sarah Burger (14:10.648)I think that I have to separate the issues out on Mkhwanazi’s exposure because on the one hand, he gave the nation extreme hope by coming forward and exposing alleged corruption. And for whistleblowers in South Africa, that is one of the main aspects. They feel unheard. They don't feel supported by the government. They don't feel supported legally. With this exposé, it gave a lot of people hope that there will be enough pressure placed on government to address serious concerns. Because you can go and report, as I said, we've lodged 20 criminal complaints. Only one of those cases have an arrest. None of those cases have moved. And as a whistleblower, you think, I lose my job, I lose my employment, I lose my business, I lose my reputation and it's now been 10 years down the line and no one is held to account because South Africa is an unaccountable nation at this point. So I think that made the Mkhwanazi exposure ripe for everyone and touched everyone's hearts to say, come on, do something about it. And political parties jumped up and portfolio committees were all debating and arguing and everyone wanted a piece of it. But, from a different aspect altogether, the Mkhwanazi exposure also highlights a couple of personal things for me. One, I can't get into the details of what he exposed other than to say I'm not a big fan of the Political Killings Task Team because they arrested Bradley and myself in that militarised fashion. They got jets to transport accused people all over the country, which could have only cost hundreds of thousands of rands. And they've intimidated us, intimidated Bradley and I repeatedly over the last 16 months. But the real issue for me as a whistleblower is that do we all get the same protection when we go on public podiums and say to people, hey, this is what has happened. Go and do something about it. You can't have a Premier running the province if he's not accountable for…Sarah Burger (16:38.74)…you know, misconduct. You can't have leaders doing that. Do I get one of the most elite police groups, the National Intervention Unit, running around my house and protecting me like Mkhwanazi does? Do I get a safe house? Do I get bodyguards? So there is an unequal protection over here.Do the complaints that I've lodged at the police portfolio committee, do they get taken seriously from months ago and a Commission of Inquiry is set up immediately a week later? No. So I think it raises two very important things is that one, it touches on the hearts of whistleblowers to say, we need accountability. On the other hand, it also highlights that whistleblowers are simply not protected in this country and we need urgent reform so that the Mkwanazis of South Africa, the whistleblowers of South Africa, need special attention and protection.Chris Steyn (17:43.45)Do you think the reason we have not had whistleblower protection reforms is because it's simply not in the interest of political leaders?Sarah Burger (17:55.694)You know, that is a multi-pronged, it just got my juices flowing on one aspect and I want to just digress to the second one immediately. I am concerned because of the whistleblowers getting so much attention and the moment that there's budget, people say, hey, I'm also a whistleblower. You know, there's budget for that. I believe that a lot of the prominent whistleblowers in South Africa have been politically targeted. And that is why they sit 10 years on without any movement in those matters and without, for instance, larger accounting firms being held accountable. So there is a lot of political interference. The Protected Disclosures Act, and I'm sorry to say, I I read through it and it leaves you with cold comfort. It's not enough to help everyone.Again, speak again about Johann van Loggerenerg who made a beautiful point to me the other day and he said to me that what would happen if you did not have the voice to expose something politically because you did consider the repercussions, but somebody in your close circle decides to carry the can for you? Are they protected? No, they're not. So we have a legislation which is wholly inadequate for the South African whistleblower because there are so many, as we've mentioned in the beginning of this. And secondly, and very importantly, is that these institutions, the most prominent ones where whistleblowers have blown open the lid on the CETAs, the Lottery Commission, SARS, SAA, are politically connected individuals. And absolutely, it is not in their interest to stop feeding as Cynthia Stimple had put on the Whistleblower House website that she'd once heard Dudu Myeni say, the SAA Board Chairperson say in a meeting, it's our turn to eat. Yeah, we need to be very careful and there needs to perhaps be a Chapter Nine institution that can vet a process to protect proper whistleblowers.Chris Steyn (20:16.688)Until that happens. The sad reality is that for some whistleblowers, it is now too risky to come forward, which means a lot of wrongdoing goes unreported and covered up.Sarah Burger (20:32.856)Correct. I mean, what would be the incentive to go and blow the whistle if you know you're going to be financially ruined? We've got all these laws in South Africa, this Financial Intelligence Centre Agency laws that require responsible institutions like banks and law firms and other firms to run checks on people. Now, I know for myself, I've run those checks on myself to see what comes up. And you come up as a...adverse news against you as a high risk person, as a political risk, and you become unbankable, unemployable, and clients who once instructed you on seven or eight instructions a year as an attorney don't say to you, we're not working with you. They just simply don't instruct you anymore because you don't meet the threshold of what a medium low risk person is to conduct business with.I think the reality in South Africa, and I think we can take it back to the Mkhwanazi exposure, is that corporates and citizens must, not may, they must support whistleblowers. They must help them. They must be appointing people that have got four decades of experience and got blown out of the water for doing the right thing and protecting South Africa to their boards. Who would not want that? A bank, which institution would not want accountability? You need to be taking care of these people and celebrating them. They didn't wake up one day and say, I don't like my house, my car, my family, my reputation. They did it because it was right. And South Africa needs to stand behind those people. And even if corporates feel that they cannot take the personal risk and the personal sacrifice with lack of evidence in their view, they need to be supporting organisations like OUTA and the Whistleblower House and Corruption Watch in South Africa that do have the capability and the expertise to vet, protect and help whistleblowers expose malfeasance while not destroying their entire lives.Chris Steyn (22:49.776)Isn't it the ultimate irony that speaking the truth makes one a high risk person or somebody who can no longer be trusted and defies belief that one would blow up willfully your entire life to spread a lie. You know, nobody is that stupid. In conclusion, what is the most important piece of advice you can give to whistleblowers?Sarah Burger (23:22.382)You know, I don't, it's not meant to be soppy. And personally, I am quite a loner, but you need support. You need people around you. You need a group. You need a little bit of therapy. This is not something you can overcome on your own. And there is in fact, quite a large group of whistleblowers that have come out and they stand together and it's not in a soppy thing. I spoke to a whistleblower from Johannesburg, the other day that had worked in governance all her life. And she said it was the first time that she'd spoken to somebody that she didn't cry. And that's what it means. You stand together because you understand the pain and the turbulence you go through. But at the same time, we need urgent reform in this country. We cannot sit by and be the courageous ones when no one is supporting us. So find help, but also stand your ground and speak your truth. And don't stop.Chris Steyn (24:25.914)Thank you. That was Sarah Burger, Forensic Attorney, Truth Teller. Speaking to BizNews, I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you.

The Sunday Show - Sarah Burger: The political victimisation of SA’s truth tellers…

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