The brutal assassination of Babita Deokaran was not an isolated crime. It was a symptom. A loud alarm in a system where corruption is not criminal aberration but an ecosystem
Within an hour of receiving the news that whistleblower Babita Deokaran had been shot, her three sisters and brother started the drive from Durban to the hospital where she had been taken. They were halfway to Johannesburg when the family received the news that Deokaran had died from her injuries.
“That shattered us. That broke us to pieces. We had to pull off the road and weep and get back in the car and drive all the way to Johannesburg. I won’t forget that day,” said Deokaran’s brother-in-law Tony Haripersadh.
Haripersadh agreed to speak to the Mail & Guardian on behalf of the family about Deokaran, a senior employee of the Gauteng health department, who was shot outside her house in Winchester Hills, Johannesburg, after taking her daughter to school on 23 August.
“My wife and I had just entered our church at about eight o’clock,” Haripersadh recalled.
“Babita’s sister who lives in Johannesburg called me, and she yelled and said: ‘We’ve got a problem.’ She was overcome and repeatedly said: ‘They shot Babita, they shot Babita…’
“The night before she was assassinated, she called my grandchild because it was her birthday on the 22nd and she spoke to my family and said: ‘I’ll talk to you during the course of the week when I have more time.’”
Moments before Deokaran was assassinated, she had posted messages on the family WhatsApp group.
“She greeted everybody good morning and wished us a good day. And a short while later we got the news that she was shot,” recalls Haripersadh, who had known Deokaran since primary school.
“I knew her as a loving, charming, wonderful person. The entire family just loved her to bits. She spent time with every member of the family. She took time to call her family members, to chat to them and to check on them on special days,” he said.
When Deokaran’s brother contracted Covid-19 earlier this year, she brought him and his wife to her house to take care of him. But six weeks before her own death, Deokaran’s brother succumbed to the coronavirus. Her murder dealt a double blow to the family.
Her family remembers Deokaran as a caring person who enjoyed cooking and baking, and who was also a keen traveller.
“We’ve got some lovely memorable photographs,” remembers Haripersadh, affectionately recalling a road trip to the Sani Pass in Lesotho with his wife, Deokaran and her 16-year-old daughter. The teenager now lives with her aunt, Deokaran’s youngest sister, as per her will.
The family is struggling to move on after her horrific death.
“We are not the same after Babita has been taken away. This came to us as a sudden shock and something that hurt us so deeply that we are still reeling with a lot of pain and grief,” said Haripersadh.
“We always knew that she was a very noble person. She was a person who lived her life with integrity and credibility,” he said, adding that Deokaran was more than a whistleblower.
“She was an obstacle for those who wanted to continue siphoning out money and as long as she was in the way they couldn’t have their own way. She stood up and they had to remove her.”
Following her murder, the Special Investigating Unit said Deokaran had been a key witness in investigations into corruption at the health department for some time. Among others, she was described as being a key witness in the probe into the irregular awarding of more than R332.5-million in tenders for personal protective equipment.
The Daily Maverick reported a message Deokaran sent to Shan Bolton, the director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation. She said: “Every year we have a different team of people who come and loot, and the funds seem to be a bottomless pit.”
Her family did not know the extent of Deokaran’s work as a whistleblower. Haripersadh explains when she was suspended for nearly six months in 2019 she did not tell them anything. It was only after she was reinstated and after nothing could be found against her that she gave her family limited information.
“And only then did she tell us what she went through and what she had found out, but she didn’t give us names of people and amounts. Those were sensitive issues. And she was a very professional person,” he said.
Deokaran and her family would have celebrated her 53rd birthday on 30 November. But instead, the family watched court proceedings unfold in the Johannesburg magistrate’s court for the six people charged with her murder. The case has been postponed to 9 December.
Asked how the family’s perception of whistleblowers might have changed following the death of Deokaran, Haripersadh said: “At the end of the day, truth must prevail.”
“We are living in a very corrupt world, and our country is no exception. It is sad that corruption has become a way of life for many people. They think absolutely nothing wrong about what they are doing, or at what cost — even in this case of removing Babita from the scene. So, we are proud as a family.
“We are very proud that she was a hero and she had the courage to do what she did. Now we realise that her life would have been a very lonely life in a profession where she stood up to do what she did.
“And you know, we realise that she did something that was noble. And she paid for it with her life. And we will always remember Babita as a hero, not only for us and herself but for the country.”
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