Rising death toll of SA corruption-busters like Bouwer van Niekerk highlights cost of accountability

Standing up to corruption in South Africa risks costing you your life.

This is the only conclusion we can draw from the horrifying murder of lawyer Bouwer van Niekerk on Friday morning at his law firm, gunned down in what may be a direct response to his work as the attorney for the business rescue of NTC Global Trade Fund, an alleged Ponzi scheme.

News24 reported on Saturday that Van Niekerk had received a phone call from a woman speaking Afrikaans some days previously, telling him to resign or he would not “see the end of the week”. The outlet reported that a similar threat was made to business rescue practitioner Kurt Knoop, who took the decision to resign from the case.

Van Niekerk – reportedly a brave and principled lawyer, and the father of a 12 year-old son – did not.

Even one such case would be appalling. But it lands in a climate of escalating threats and attacks on those confronting corruption.

A litany of murder

Over the past five years alone, the cases stack up:

23 August 2021: Babita Deokaran – Johannesburg. Senior Gauteng Health official and key PPE corruption witness shot outside her home.

18 March 2023: Cloete Murray and Thomas Murray – N1 near Johannesburg. High-profile insolvency practitioner and his son gunned down in a suspected hit.

29 March 2023: Zanele Precious Nkosi – Rustenburg. Attorney who specialised in municipal litigation shot dead outside her law firm.

6 August 2023: Frans Mathipa - The South African Police Service Colonel was shot in the head and killed by assassins. Seven members of the SANDF were arrested in July for the Hawks investigators murder. It has been pointed out that Mathipa was shot dead while driving a moving car, a hit that reportedly could only be carried out by someone with military or specialist training.

8 December 2023: Simnikiwe Mapini – Germiston. Ekurhuleni auditor shot in car while probing chemical toilets tender.

11 July 2024: Zenzele Sithole – Johannesburg CBD. Forensic investigator for the City of Johannesburg killed in a drive-by while probing alleged “guns-for-hire” links involving JMPD armoury.

7 March 2025: Pamela Mabini – Gqeberha. Community activist and whistleblower for – among others – the Timothy Omotoso case, shot outside her house.

29 April 2025: Elona Sombulula – Eastern Cape. Regional court prosecutor shot dead.

30 June 2025: Mpho Mafole – Kempton Park. Head of forensic audits for the City of Ekurhuleni ambushed and killed while probing major revenue shortfalls.

2 August 2025: Tracy Brown – Gqeberha. Regional court prosecutor gunned down in her driveway in an apparent targeted hit.

Then there are those who were attacked but escaped with their lives, such as Coreth Naudé, a senior advocate who was representing SARS in a tax inquiry when she was shot in the head twice on 18 July 2024.

This list likely represents only a fraction of the true death toll – but it is intensely concerning that the rate of these assassinations appears to have rocketed up in 2025.

If this pattern holds, who will risk their life to audit, investigate or prosecute municipal corruption? Which lawyer will agree to unpick the business dealings of crooks?

Government must walk the talk on whistleblowers

In President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address on 6 February 2025, he committed to ramping up protections for whistleblowers.

He pledged to “finalise the Whistleblower Protection Framework and introduce the Whistleblower Protections Bill in Parliament during this financial year”.

Since then, visible progress has been scant – while government itself seems to be hunting down whistleblowers within its ranks.

News24 reported last week that the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) was paying a private forensic company R261,000 to identify staff members who may have leaked information exposing alleged R2-billion corruption within the GPAA to the media.

In the Department of Social Development, meanwhile, spokesperson Lumka Oliphant claimed she was suspended last week on suspicion of being the person who spilled the beans to the Sunday Times about a R3-million trip to New York by the department. 

Minister of Social Development Sisisi Tolashe denies this, saying Oliphant was suspended due to serious allegations of mismanagement – but the timing of the suspension, just after the Sunday Times’ exposé, raises eyebrows.  

To give another example, in May the Eastern Cape Department of Health had to abandon a campaign to hunt down a doctor who exposed the staff shortages at Livingstone Hospital in Gqeberha following public outrage.

The official position of the South African government is that whistleblowing is encouraged.

In a statement on the government website, in fact, it says: “As an active citizen it is your responsibility to provide relevant information related to squandering, maladministration, and misuse of your taxes to the law enforcement agencies.”

It is hard to rationalise this stance with the shameful treatment of actual government whistleblowers in recent months.

Increasingly embattled media environment

A further dimension to this picture is the situation faced by South African media, which in recent months has faced escalating online attacks by – in particular – right-wing influencers, as this piece by News24’s George Claassen lays out.

In right-wing online circles, contempt for the local “mainstream media” has become de rigueur.

But what the likes of Rob Hersov and Renaldo Gouws never explain, in their relentless onslaught on outlets such as Daily Maverick and News24, is: Who will do the kind of critical investigative work undertaken by the likes of Pieter-Louis Myburgh and Jeff Wicks to expose corruption and painstakingly trace criminal networks if the “mainstream media” collapses?

Certainly not right-wing podcasters, who do little more than disseminate sneering anti-intellectual rhetoric from their armchairs. 

Neither will they sit through hours of court proceedings to let the public know what is happening in our justice system, or days of parliamentary meetings to make sure a beady eye is kept trained on our public representatives.

In such circles, a popular phrase has become: “You don’t hate journalists enough.”

It was hard not to think about that phrase when Daily Maverick last week received a threat phrased in a hypothetical statement from an online right-winger to “storm the newsroom during a morning editorial meeting, opening fire on staff writers”. The threat included the location of Daily Maverick’s offices.

Where is the urgency from our leaders?

Minister of Justice Mmamoloko Kubayi released a statement on Sunday expressing “deep sadness” at what she called the “tragic killing” of Bouwer van Niekerk.

The statement made no attempt to link the assassination to ongoing attacks on corruption-busters, saying instead: “Mr van Niekerk worked on many matters, and there is no indication yet of what could have led to this crime.”

We can quibble about motives and wait for dockets to inch forward. Or, we can call this what it is: a campaign to make the price of accountability unbearable. DM