By the time Sibusiso died, the charm was gone — only sores, silence and regret remained.
He had just paid lobola and started driving his own taxi — a beat-up white HiAce with tinted windows, booming speakers and a swagger that turned heads. His route was short, but his reach was wide. Every day, he picked up more than just passengers.
He made promises from the driver’s seat — to side-chicks, to church girls, to schoolgirls in uniform.
“I’ll marry you,” he’d say — days after swearing the same to someone else.
“I’ll never leave you” — even as he made the next drop-off around the corner.
“Our fathers never used condoms — and they lived long, didn’t they?”
He called Aids a scam. Said it was made up by nurses to control traditional men.
He dismissed antiretrovirals as Western poison and insisted traditional medicine would be enough.
He didn’t test. He didn’t believe. He trusted only in what his elders had told him. He had charm. He had wheels. He had denial.
And then he got sick. Badly.
His body wasted away.
The taxi stood idle.
The girls stopped coming.
The lies dried up.
And finally, so did he.
It wasn’t the nurses who killed him. It wasn’t the pamphlets or the warnings or the doctors.
It was the disease — and his refusal to face it.
At the time, it felt personal. But in hindsight, his life mirrored a national pattern. Because Sibusiso wasn’t just romantically reckless. His denial wasn’t just personal — it was prophetic.
He wanted the perks of intimacy without the price of integrity. He made promises he never intended to keep.
He represented, in flesh and diesel fumes, a pattern now familiar in high office — leaders who seduce the public with slogans while looting them blind.
And that’s how I’ve come to see corruption in South Africa.
Corruption is a virus
Like HIV, corruption doesn’t make much noise at first. It hides. Spreads quietly. Weakens vital organs — municipalities, procurement systems, school feeding schemes.
It eats away at the immune system of a nation: our ethics, our trust, our ability to deliver services — until one day, the whole system collapses.
But here’s the twist — the corrupt rarely blame the corruption. They blame the auditor. We — the auditors, whistleblowers and watchdogs — are cast as the enemy.
“You’re too strict.”
“You’re slowing down service delivery.”
“You’re anti-transformation.”
It’s the same pattern of denial. The same refusal to accept responsibility. Like Sibusiso, the corrupt argue: “Our fathers did it too. Why should we change?”
But the world has changed
When Sibusiso said, “Our fathers never used condoms,” he was referring to cultural forebears, men who lived in a time when information was scarce and consequences were less visible.
And when today’s officials echo that logic — “Our predecessors did this too” — they invoke a different kind of forefather: public servants who operated under an apartheid system that lacked transparency and accountability.
But those weren’t our fathers.
They were enforcers of secrecy — architects of exclusion. Not moral elders. Not role models.
Back then, there was no Public Finance Management Act (PFMA). No Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA). The Auditor-General’s office lacked independence, capacity, and teeth.
There were no battalions of accountants tracking tenders — no legal duty to act on audit findings. Auditing was a formality. Corruption — especially state-sanctioned — was rampant, protected by censorship and apartheid’s unaccountable machinery.
We didn’t fight for democracy just to replicate the shadows. We fought to expose them.
Don’t blame the nurse for the virus
The Office of the Auditor-General is not a bulletproof vest — but it is a stethoscope. It tells us where the fever is rising. It helps the nation feel its own pulse.
A qualified audit opinion is not a weapon; it’s a diagnosis. A clean audit isn’t a trophy; it’s an immune system that’s finally fighting back.
If South Africa is to heal, we must stop shooting the nurses. We must stop silencing the truth-tellers and start confronting the truth.
Because corruption doesn’t just cost us money — it costs lives.
When ambulances don’t arrive.
When textbooks never reach the classroom.
When food parcels are looted.
When forensic auditors are murdered in cold blood.
A life taken, a legacy left
The recent killing of forensic auditor Mpho Mafole in Ekurhuleni brought this home in the most painful way. His death wasn’t metaphorical. It was brutal. Deliberate. A man who traced numbers was traced — and hunted down.
May his blood not cry out in vain.
Rest well, brave brother.
Truth-teller.
Numbers-warrior.
Guardian of the people’s purse.
Your audit is complete — but your report will echo through us.
The weight we carry
Years ago, while working for the Auditor-General, I was shot. Whether it was linked to my audit work in Johannesburg’s procurement systems, I may never know.
What I do know is this — the police contaminated the scene. The investigation stalled. The case faded.
But the questions never did.
And now, with fresh allegations surfacing against senior SAPS officials, like those made by Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi implicating the police in corruption, cover-ups and political manipulation, those questions grow louder.
What hope is there for justice when those tasked with upholding it may be compromised? When the watchdogs are attacked and the police dogs are bought, we are no longer policing corruption — corruption is policing us.
I’m no longer an auditor by practice, but I’ll always be one at heart. Because once you’ve seen the truth behind the numbers — the ghost employees, the siphoned budgets, the rigged tenders — you can’t unsee it. You carry the weight of it.
And so I write.
For those still in the trenches. Still tracing paper trails. Still whispering truth into spreadsheets.
The courage to change
To the audit professionals, financial controllers, and PFMA/MFMA watchdogs:
Your work is not in vain. It may be dangerous. It may be thankless. But it is holy ground.
You are not just counting rands — you are defending the soul of a nation.
Healing begins with honesty. Reform begins with repentance.
And revival begins when we stop protecting the corrupt — and start protecting the courageous.
If we want to honour Mpho Mafole, let’s start by shielding whistleblowers the way we shield ministers.
Let’s build independent reporting lines.
Let’s resource Chapter 9 institutions properly.
Let’s enforce real consequences for audit findings — not just note them and move on.
Let’s stop the blame.
Let’s treat the real disease — before it becomes terminal. DM