Price of courage: Reward scheme must provide a proper set of incentives to whistleblowers

Rewards for whistleblowers is a controversial topic. The term “whistleblower” evokes imagery of an authoritative call to attention. However, in the past, South Africa’s reaction to protecting whistleblowers has often been muted. The silence after the whistle blows, in the experience of the whistleblower is an isolated quiet, when the individual who dares to speak out can be rejected by their colleagues, profession and community. Breaking the silence requires not just legal protections, but a cultural shift in how we treat those who come forward to expose malicious actors.

Babita Deokaran, senior official in the Gauteng health department, identified R332-million in procurement corruption at Tembisa Hospital. In August 2021, she was murdered outside her home. Her death is not an isolated event – it is one among many pieces of evidence that shows the system for safeguarding whistleblowers is broken.

For 26 years, the Protected Disclosures Act has failed in its promise to defend whistleblowers from reprisals. The protections offered under the Act are largely retroactive and, frequently, require protracted legal action. The Act recognises that speaking truth and sounding the alarm is a form of civic duty, yet it provides little reason for individuals to act with courage.

The new Protected Disclosures Bill (2026) has introduced the concept of paying whistleblowers for the risks of their efforts (providing the possibility of reward). This is a positive development though the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) has expressed reservations about the exact model being proposed. The Bill limits payments exclusively to a proportion of fines resulting from criminal convictions. So, if a whistleblower’s information assists the state in recovering R100-million through civil litigation, that whistleblower’s valuable information would receive no reward – and may well come at great expense to the person blowing the whistle. The Bill also removes every employee within the public service from eligibility for any award, thereby excluding a whole class of persons most capable of identifying instances of corruption. In other respects, the Bill is also very ambitious. It creates the prospect of rewards from at least all criminal fines and potentially all penalties resulting from the Bill’s definition of “improper conduct”, which may encourage an unworkable tidal wave of claims for an already undercapacitated state.

The Zondo Commission, citing PARI’s research, formally recommended providing financial rewards to those who blow the whistle. Prior to the Protected Disclosures Bill, a private members bill was tabled in Parliament, proposing to strengthen procurement oversight by offering incentives to those who blow the whistle against fraudulent procurement practices. Cosatu had welcomed this, framing it as an integral step towards holding corrupt officials accountable, providing that it does not undermine existing collective bargaining or labour rights. Discussions regarding incentivised, or “encouraged” whistleblowing are now public and pressing.

The reward provision in the new Protected Disclosures Bill could add a new instrument to the anti-corruption ensemble, one which would encourage people to come forward, acknowledging the financial risks in blowing the whistle. But the reward scheme must provide a proper set of incentives to whistleblowers.

First, the state should ensure that it can receive a percentage of the recoveries from the proceeds of crime even where there is no criminal conviction, including a percentage of civil damages awarded to the state, that is, assuming the information disclosed by the whistleblower was material to those recoveries or damages. The state could also consider introducing a qui tam-style mechanism, where it provides a legal basis for private individuals to enforce legislation against fraudulent transactions. The whistleblower can sue the party accused of, for example, procurement corruption for the state and receive a portion of any recoveries or damages awarded by the judge.

South Africa’s already overburdened judiciary cannot implement a large-scale programme all at once. These various incentive mechanisms should ideally be rolled out incrementally as lessons are learnt along the way. Reward mechanisms could be tailored for particular sectors, such as for corruption in public procurement, taxation, organised crime, and so on. After observing the results, they could adapt the process, build capacity accordingly and grow incrementally.

The benefits of such an approach are easy to articulate. Whistleblowers receive reimbursement for their time and risk. The state gains valuable insight into wrongdoing. The National Prosecuting Authority has fewer cases to prosecute, since the evidence needed to support prosecutions will come pre-prepared within the civil lawsuit brought by the whistleblower.

The concept is not hypothetical; it has been used successfully to recover billions in dollars in the US.

The scale of corruption in South Africa’s procurement system is staggering, estimated to have consumed tens of billions of rands in the Zondo Commission era alone. The present deterrent mechanisms in place have clearly been unsuccessful. Criminals understand it. Corrupt government officials understand it. Those willing to become whistleblowers understand it too.

Encouraged whistleblowing is not a panacea but it may go some way in fixing what the current system cannot. It brings forward information which would otherwise remain hidden. It will make corrupt cabals less secure because of the potential of someone breaking ranks. What a well-designed incentive does is nuanced: it acknowledges the scale of sacrifice, and it signals that the society that benefits from a person’s courage also bears a responsibility to them. It transforms the transaction from one of pure martyrdom to one of partnership, however imperfect. And it offers a new instrument, a carefully tuned whistle, that may just give someone considering the leap, the courage to do so.

Investigative journalist Jeff Wicks stated: “[Whistleblowers] risk not only their lives, but also their livelihoods, for the benefit of truth, transparency and democracy. We need to protect them.” Cynthia Stimpel, the whistleblower from SAA, lays the case bare: “As whistleblowers, we’re naive when we take that first step. I thought that once I’d notified people the cogs would unlock and things would start to work… then the devastation starts and you feel like you’ve been knocked over and had the carpet pulled under you.” DM

Zain Mayet is a researcher at the Public Affairs Research Institute.