Blow by blow: Jeff Wicks, winner of this year’s Nat Nakasa Award for Courageous Journalism, and author of The Shadow State, with Renu and Dominic Williams at the book launch in Johannesburg, which was also launched at Ike’s Book Corner for Durban family members and book lovers. Photos: NB Publishers/Tafelberg, Deokaran family
Investigative journalist Jeff Wicks has turned his award-winning exposé of Babita Deokaran’s assassination into a searing new book.
A year after I watched him win the Nat Nakasa Award for Courageous Journalism at the The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) Awards in Durban, Wicks returns with a work that asks why whistleblowers in South Africa are killed — and why their killers walk free.
I remember the moment clearly. Durban’s Radisson Blu Hotel in September last year — the Nat Nakasa Award.
As event coordinator, I stood at the side of the stage, camera in hand, watching Wicks accept the award for courageous journalism. He looked slightly startled by the ovation, yet resolute. His work had already shaken the country — an exposé of the networks behind whistleblower Deokaran’s assassination.
Now, a year later, Wicks has given that courage permanence in print. His book, The Shadow State: Why Babita Deokaran Had to Die (Tafelberg/NB Publishers/PRH), was launched in Durban this week and is rolling out nationwide through Exclusive Books.
It is both a forensic account of Deokaran’s killing and a meditation on the cost of truth-telling in South Africa’s fragile democracy.
On 23 August 2021, Deokaran was gunned down outside her Johannesburg home. A mother, a senior Gauteng health official and a quiet whistleblower, she had just flagged suspicious Covid-era procurement at Tembisa Hospital. Her death was a brutal reminder that corruption in the democratic state does not just loot coffers — it kills.
At the centre of Wicks’s book is this scandal. Inflated contracts, shell companies and a procurement racket siphoned hundreds of millions from the public purse at the height of the pandemic. Deokaran warned her superiors: “Our lives could be in danger.” Days later, hitmen — izinkabi in township slang — ambushed her.
The gunmen have since been convicted. But the masterminds remain at large.
Wicks painstakingly sifted through more than 60 000 emails, traced phone records and tracked down front companies. His reporting exposed links to politically connected business people, including notorious tenderpreneur Vusi “Cat” Matlala.
Yet the trail has run cold where it matters most. As Wicks writes: “The shadowy people who ordered her slaying are still walking free.”
What lifts The Shadow State beyond a news investigation is its layered narrative. Wicks blends the rigour of evidence with storytelling that humanises Deokaran. She emerges not as a political firebrand, but as a diligent public servant whose quiet integrity made her a threat to criminal syndicates.
The book is also self-reflective. Wicks admits to questioning whether the story was “worth dying for”. He retraces the personal risks — chasing leads at dodgy business addresses, meeting reluctant sources — and the toll on his family. In this, he echoes the fears of every South African journalist who has stared into the abyss of exposing corruption.
For readers, the most haunting theme is the state’s failure to protect whistleblowers. Four years after Deokaran’s death, there is still no comprehensive law. Civil society has called for a “Babita Deokaran law on whistleblowing” but government reform remains slow.
Instead, the state often turns its fire on the messengers. On the very day Wicks’s book was launched, the Government Pensions Administration Agency confirmed it had contracted forensic investigators to mirror-image employees’ devices in a R261 000 hunt for “leakers” of corruption allegations worth R2 billion. The optics are damning — whistleblowers are pursued, while corruption festers.
This pattern stretches beyond Deokaran. From ANC councillors exposing housing fraud to state capture insiders like Athol Williams, now in exile, South Africa has developed a grim record — whistleblowers are harassed, bankrupted or killed. The journalists who cover them, such as Wicks, are left exposed.
At its heart, however, The Shadow State is a tribute.
Wicks restores dignity to Deokaran by refusing to let her be remembered only as a victim. He insists her murder is not an aberration but a window into how corruption has metastasised in public health and beyond.
The book’s forensic evidence is damning, but it also carries an emotional charge. In retelling Deokaran’s story, Wicks ensures her warnings echo. Her life becomes a moral compass for what the democratic state ought to be.
As Cedric Sissing of Ike’s Book observed at the launch: “This is not just about a book. It’s about supporting brave journalism in a country where truthtelling is punished.”
For me, the journey from that awards stage in Durban to the pages of this book feels almost inevitable. The Nat Nakasa Award honoured Wicks’s courage in real time; The Shadow State cements it in history and that of the poignant suicide of Durban-born journalist Nat Nakasa, exiled in New York in the Sixties.
When the audience rose to applaud him that night, including members of Deokaran’s Phoenix family, it was more than a polite standing ovation. It was solidarity. A recognition that journalism, at its best, gives voice to the silenced.
One year later, his book ensures Babita Deokaran’s name cannot be erased by fear or impunity.
Wicks has written more than a book about one whistleblower’s murder. He has written about South Africa itself — about a democracy corroded by networks of greed and about the individuals who dare to resist.
Why Babita Deokaran Had to Die demands that readers ask uncomfortable questions. What does it mean when a whistleblower is silenced and nothing changes? What does it say about a state that protects predators more than the honest?
A year after I helped coordinate the ceremony where Jeff Wicks was honoured for courageous journalism, I find myself reviewing the book born of that courage. The ovation has faded, but the call for justice resounds louder than ever.
The 2025 Nat Nakasa Awards for Courageous Journalism, presented by Sanef in partnership with Sanlam, will take place on Saturday, 20 September, in Johannesburg.
The Nat Nakasa Award for Media Integrity recognises outstanding journalists for their integrity and fearless reporting. The winner receives R20 000.
The Nat Nakasa Award for Community Media honours journalists from community media outlets who have demonstrated courageous journalism and receives R10 000.
Marlan Padayachee, a member of Sanef, is a veteran political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent from South Africa’s transition to democracy, and a recipient of awards — including from the British Council and the USIS International Visitor. He is a freelance journalist, photographer and researcher.