Ah, Chief Dwasaho! As I sit in the hushed echo of my writing desk, I sense the whispers of those long gone. I write with the dead standing behind me.
They gather in your shadow, too, like unburied truths. They have stories to tell, stories your speeches cannot sanitise, stories your government cannot outrun. They insist that the political establishment hear them in the dark, when the blue lights have faded and the cavalry of special advisers has gone home. They insist on haunting you.
Marius van der Merwe
My name is Marius “Vlam” van der Merwe. You met me only through headlines, my leader. I had barely left the witness stand at the Madlanga Commission investigating political interference and judicial capture when assassins returned me to silence.
I had spoken of police hit squads and the seamless choreography between criminal syndicates and politicians. Days later, I was executed outside my home on 5 December 2025, in front of my family. You run your mouth and call my killing “heinous”, really now? Truth is, your sound bites echo like empty shells – weightless words drifting over a country where truth bleeds and the dead listen longer than the living.
Pamela Mabini
My name is Pamela Phumla Mabini. I was a champion for the survivors in the Timothy Omotoso multiple rape case. My work was to help young women speak. Because I stood beside them, I was shot dead outside my home in March 2025. My killers understood something your state refuses to learn: truth-telling in South Africa is fatal.
Mpho Mafole
My name is Mpho Mafole. I was the head of forensic and corporate audit in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, a civil servant naïve enough to believe that exposing corruption would not earn me a grave.
On 27 June 2025, I submitted a forensic report detailing alleged irregularities in a R1.8-billion chemical toilet tender. Three days later – on 30 June 2025 – I was shot dead outside my home in Kempton Park. They silenced me to protect a billion-rand pipeline of patronage. My death was not random. It was a memo written in blood, a reminder that in South Africa, telling the truth inside the state machinery can still cost you your life.
Armand Swart
My name is Armand Swart. You did not know me, my leader. I was not a whistleblower – yet in April 2024, I was shot 23 times outside my workplace in Vereeniging.
What followed was not chaos, but orchestration. The AK-47 used to kill me was recovered soon after, and for the first time, the state acknowledged that this was no random gangster hit. Ballistics experts told the Madlanga Commission in October 2025 that the same rifle was used to execute DJ Sumbody, DJ Vintos and at least twenty-odd other murders, cash-in-transit heists, and contract killings.
The suspects now charged include alleged hitmen that the police say worked for a network – Katiso “KT” Molefe (accused mastermind) and his so-called foot soldiers, Michael Pule Tau, Musa Kekana and Tiego Floyd Mabusela.
So no – my death was not a random act of gangster violence. It was a message. Impunity does not care whether you spoke the truth – only whether you could.
Siminkiwe Mapini
My name is Simnikiwe Mapini. I was an adjudicator in the finance department at the City of Ekurhuleni – a man entrusted with protecting public funds. On 8 December 2023, while driving near Rand Airport in Germiston with a colleague, our car stopped at a red light. Out of nowhere, two gunmen pulled up alongside us and opened fire. I died on the spot. My assassination was a silent warning, a message in bullets to anyone who dares lift the lid on corruption.
Babita Deokaran
My name is Babita Deokaran. You know me well, my leader. I exposed the fraudulent contracts, ghost suppliers and suspicious payments that have been bleeding Tembisa Hospital dry – more than R850-million (by the time I was silenced) – now amounting to more than R2-billion in extraction networks and engineered looting.
I was assassinated outside my home on 23 August 2021, minutes after dropping off my daughter at school. Yes, six hitmen sit behind bars, but the masterminds – the ones who feared my diligence, the ones whose companies siphoned public money under the state’s nose – still walk freely among you.
You declared me a hero once I was dead, my leader. But I needed protection when I was alive. Some of the payments I flagged went to companies tied to politically connected families and to shady businesspeople like Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala. You ran past many of their mansions during your morning jogs, my leader. You may not have known their roles, but the state you lead chose not to look into them. And that is why I am dead.
Sindiso Magaqa
My name is Sindiso Magaqa. I was young, outspoken, and determined to clean up the uMzimkhulu Local Municipality. I fought corruption around a crooked community hall tender. For that, I was ambushed in July 2017 and died weeks later.
Once, you walked the same party corridors I walked. Yet I was buried long before the truth was, and still nothing happened. The masterminds are yet to face justice. The SAPS Political Killings Task Team that brought the hitman to book was “disbanded” by your incoherent Minister of Police, Senzo Mchunu.
Moss Phakoe
My name is Moss Phakoe. I was a Rustenburg councillor who believed corruption should not be a death sentence. I gathered a dossier of municipal graft and handed it to then president Jacob Zuma. Two days later, on 14 March 2009, I was shot outside my home.
My killers were not strangers. They were comrades, men who wore the exact colours you still defend, my leader. These were men who shook your hand at conferences and sang the same liberation songs, where lines of freedom and unity rang out, only to turn those words into hollow echoes with the crack of gunfire.
They broke bread in the same political tents. Comrade Leadership, my death was not an aberration. It was a message. A warning. A prophecy you have still not heeded.
Jimmy Mohala
My name is Jimmy Mohlala. I was the Speaker of the Mbombela Municipality. I refused to approve irregularities in the R1.2-billion tender for the 2010 World Cup stadium. They shot me dead outside my home on 4 January 2009, in front of my son.
The stadium was completed. The looters prospered. My family buried me quietly. My ghost has waited the longest for justice.
These voices – recent and old – now gather behind your chair at the Union Buildings. They do not rest. They do not dissipate. They do not accept condolences.
And still, the roll call is unfinished.
They demand answers. Justice.
The Living Dead
Not all of us carry bullets in our bodies, Mr President. Some of us suffer from your government’s maddening indifference. We survived the hitmen, but we did not survive the state.
While you may argue that these tragedies are merely isolated incidents – “bad apples” in an otherwise healthy system – the pattern of silence and inaction from those in power speaks of a deeper, systemic issue. It’s not just a few rogue elements; it’s a culture of impunity, a pervasive rot that feeds on State neglect.
Stan and John
My name is Stan, and my colleague is John. In 2017, we leaked the Gupta emails – more than 100 documents mapping the architecture of State Capture from the inside.
We gave this country the evidence it needed: ministers compromised, state-owned enterprises rigged, tenders diverted, Cabinet decisions drafted in Saxonwold. Our reward was exile behind anonymity. We live in hiding because your state cannot protect the truth, my leader.
Cynthia Stimpel
My name is Cynthia Stimpel. In 2016, I was Group Treasurer at SAA when I discovered a proposed R256-million deal with BNP Capital that violated every principle of due process. I refused to sign. The board ignored me and approved it in my absence. I was suspended, then dismissed for “insubordination”.
I blew the whistle – alerting National Treasury, civil society watchdogs and even the Public Protector under the Protected Disclosures Act. The contract was cancelled. Yet the cost to me was unmistakable: my job, my reputation, my financial security. They say justice is blind. I say justice closes its eyes when the powerful hold the pen.
***
Until then, Mr President, the dead will haunt the political establishment in their sleep – and their list will grow longer still.
But before I go, Mr President, I leave you a direct invitation. Will you meet the families of those who suffered under your watch next week? Offer a public acknowledgement of your neglect and set the path to justice in motion – not platitudes, but healing and accountability?
Till next week, my man. Send me nowhere. I QUIT. DM
Bhekisisa Mncube is an author and columnist who won the national 2024 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award for columns/editorials, as well as the same category at the regional 2020 Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards.