High-stakes heroes: Some of SA’s bravest whistle-blowers have been women

At 8am last Monday, Babita Deokaran was returning home after dropping her child off at school. As she drew up outside her Joburg home, assailants in an unmarked BMW opened fire. She died of her wounds later that day.

The murder of Deokaran, a whistle-blower in an alleged personal protective equipment scam at the Gauteng health department, underlines just how high the stakes have become for those who speak out about corruption in SA.

It’s also a poignant reminder that in the war on graft, many of SA’s bravest whistle-blowers have been women. Look back through history and there are figures such as Lady Anne Barnard, Olive Schreiner and Emily Hobhouse. In SA’s recent past, too, women have played a prominent role in calling power to account. Think of former public protector Thuli Madonsela, Bianca Goodson and Mosilo Mothepu at Trillian, and SAA whistle-blower Cynthia Stimpel, for example.

It’s not just in SA, either. Certainly, before the likes of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange became household names, some of the most high-profile whistle-blowers in recent history have been women. Take Sherron Watkins, Coleen Rowley and Cynthia Cooper, who were named Time magazine’s persons of the year in 2002 for their efforts to expose corruption at Enron, the FBI and WorldCom respectively.

In conducting research for The Whistleblowers, in which she tells the stories of 15 contemporary local whistle-blowers, journalist Mandy Wiener found a correlation between whistle-blowing and women. "I definitely noticed that most whistle-blowers are either women or, if men, they are the sons of very strong, often single mothers," she says.

It’s an interesting observation, particularly given the prominence of women whistle-blowers in SA recently. But while there’s little academic literature to suggest women are more inclined to blow the whistle than men, studies have shown that they tend to pay a higher price when they do. And unlike men, whose position of power or authority at the workplace provides something of a protective cloak, there’s little such safeguard for women.

‘Keep your head down’

From the moment she started as CEO of Trillian Management Consulting in January 2016, Bianca Goodson knew something wasn’t right. There was something fishy about the firm’s relationship with clients such as Eskom and Transnet, and with its "supply development and localisation partner" McKinsey. But the final straw came a few months later, when Goodson was asked to sign personal surety on a R300m loan from the Bank of Baroda.

At 6am the next day, after a sleepless, tear-filled night, she fired off a letter of resignation and went on holiday. Five days later, while she was trying to relax on the balcony of the uMhlanga Sands Resort, she opened the Mail & Guardian to find an organogram detailing the links between Eskom, Transnet and the Guptas.

It confirmed her worst suspicions.

From there, she found herself largely alone. Though Goodson’s fiancé had (grudgingly) supported her resignation, he now became adamant that she should "keep [her] head down and protect [her] four-year-old daughter", she tells the FM.

In the months that followed, Goodson’s life fell apart as she battled to reconcile her desire to tell the truth about the company and support fellow Trillian whistle-blower Mosilo Mothepu with the pressure she was under to remain quiet. "I’m ashamed to admit it," she says, "but alcohol was the only thing that helped."

Goodson’s husband agreed that her bosses Clive Angel and Eric Wood seemed to be in the wrong, but he was convinced she should stay silent. And when Mothepu gave Goodson’s name to public protector Thuli Madonsela, he insisted that she cut all ties with her friend and former colleague.

Within five months of their wedding, their marriage had collapsed.

Complicating things was that, by blowing the whistle, Goodson had gone against the wishes not only of her new husband, but also her lawyers and pastors. Her father also advised her to keep a low profile and move on with her life. In fact, it was just her religious mother who had a different take: she was adamant that Angel and Wood "must pay for what they [had] done".

When Goodson finally plucked up the courage to call Mothepu, the two were quick to patch up their differences. "There was no debate about whether or not to take them down," she recalls. "Our only disagreements were about how to do it."

What does she think drives women to blow the whistle? "I think women’s tolerance for bullshit is just a bit lower," she says. "We are more emotive. When something wrong is in front of you, your reaction is more intense."

Grounded at SAA

When Cynthia Stimpel, author of Hijackers on Board, walked into work at SAA in 2006, she thought she’d landed her dream job. But that all started to change when Dudu Myeni was appointed board chair in 2012, and it gathered steam three years later when Phumeza Nhantsi was made interim CFO.

As a woman of colour in finance, Stimpel had no help in climbing the corporate ladder. "At the start of my career, I worked in the dealing room in a bank," the former SAA group treasurer says. "I was told to drink whisky and play golf if I wanted to fit in … but I refused. Every job I’ve ever got has been on merit."

As soon as Stimpel noticed things going awry at the national carrier, she started asking questions. And each time she was told to look the other way, she asked another question.

Stimpel’s moment of truth came when she was on a walking pilgrimage in France. While there, she received an e-mail informing her that a dodgy deal she’d been fighting for months had been approved on her behalf, and in her absence. She knew she’d lose her job, but she didn’t think twice about blowing the whistle. "I couldn’t allow the taxpayer to lose a quarter of a billion [rands] on my watch," she tells the FM.

While Goodson was largely isolated through her decision to speak up, Stimpel had the full support of her husband. And despite the turbulence of the time, she was able to more or less maintain equilibrium by sticking to her routine of prayer, yoga and exercise.

"Did I go into [a] depression?" she asks. "I think I came close. There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I forced myself to carry on."

It was no easy time. Stimpel’s bosses were trying to use everything she had done at work against her, she recalls. But despite her long tenure at the company — by that point she’d been there for 10 years, two of them as group treasurer — they weren’t able to find a single instance of wrongdoing. And so they looked elsewhere.

"I’ve always been very strict on following policy," she explains. "But they turned this on its head and said I bullied my staff. The attacks on my character reduced me to tears."

A long, proud tradition

There is, of course, nothing new about women whistle-blowers in SA. While researching Rogues’ Gallery: An Irreverent History of Corruption in South Africa, from the VOC to the ANC, we found a trend going back at least 220 years. All 15 of the book’s main villains were men — something that probably had a lot to do with historical access to power — while about half of the whistle-blowers were women.

Sir George Yonge, who was appointed governor of the Cape Colony in 1799, was "decidedly the most incompetent man who has ever been at the head of affairs in the colony", according to local historian George McCall Theal. The fact that he lasted just 18 months in Africa had a lot to do with the efforts of Lady Anne Barnard.

When Yonge started doing up his official residence at vast public expense, Lady Anne took the matter to secretary of state for war Lord Henry Dundas. "Sir George Yonge is for having every supposed improvement done at once," she wrote, "and I fear does not begin with the things most necessary, but with those most connected with his own domestic conveniency."

When Yonge became embroiled in a slave-smuggling scheme, Lady Anne wrote to Marquess Richard Wellesley, the governor-general of India, claiming Yonge had been paid a "douceur" (bribe) of about R30m (in today’s terms) to turn a blind eye to the illegal importation of slaves into the colony.

Yonge was fired shortly afterwards.

Fast-forward a century, and you have Olive Schreiner taking on a man who has gone down as arguably the most corrupt in SA history.

When Schreiner first met Cecil John Rhodes, she believed him to be "the only great man and man of genius SA possesses". However, her opinion changed once she got to know him. After overhearing Rhodes and his cabinet minister James Sivewright talk about their involvement in a corrupt all-boys’ club while waiting on the Matjiesfontein station platform in 1892, Schreiner wrote to her mother: "When both he and Sivewright came forward to shake hands, I turned on my heel and went to my house."

Schreiner never spoke to Rhodes again. In 1898, when Rhodes attempted to gain re-election to the premiership of the Cape Colony, Schreiner and her husband, Samuel Cronwright-Schreiner, did their damnedest to stop him. Schreiner would publish both a novella and a political pamphlet detailing Rhodes’s corrupt politics and his genocidal actions in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

In the lead-up to the elections, Cronwright-Schreiner distributed a handbill stating "how the natives are ruled under Cecil Rhodes’s company". Beneath the heading was a gruesome photograph of three Ndebele men hanging dead from a tree in Bulawayo’s main street, while a group of unconcerned whites looked on.

So little was Schreiner trusted by the British that during the South African War her study and books were burnt by British troops, and she was held for much of the war under what was effectively house arrest.

Of course, during that war, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener embarked on a far more egregious campaign against civilians. Under his infamous scorched earth policy, British troops burnt Boer farms to the ground and interned women and children in "refugee camps".

Conditions were so atrocious that about 28,000 white and at least 20,000 black South Africans lost their lives in these segregated concentration camps. Were it not for the efforts of 39-year-old Emily Hobhouse, many thousands more would have died.

After founding the SA Women and Children Distress Fund, Hobhouse left her home in Cornwall to sail to the Cape. Once there, she convinced the governor to allow her to visit some of the camps. Based on her experiences, she compiled a report that described the "wholesale cruelty" she saw. She lamented having to "stand and look on at such misery", and described the British position as "hollow and rotten to the heart’s core".

Back in England, Hobhouse leveraged her connections among opposition politicians to deliver her report to parliament. In July 1901, a commission was set up that visited almost every concentration camp in SA. When its recommendations were put in place in November 1901, conditions improved.

Three-quarters of a century later, yet another woman was blowing the whistle on yet another scandal in SA. This time, it was on a plan to use millions of rands in state funds for propaganda purposes.

The apartheid-era Information Scandal ended the political careers of information minister Connie Mulder and information department secretary Eschel Rhoodie in the late 1970s. The main source of all the initial information was a woman, code-named Myrtle by journalists at the Rand Daily Mail (her true identity was never revealed).

As editor Allister Sparks would later write, Rhoodie’s information department was a "Playboy scene", where many of the women staff members were emotionally abused. Sparks suggested that this was at least part of the reason Myrtle broke with her male colleagues.

While writing his final book, The Sword and the Pen, Sparks asked Myrtle if he could reveal her identity. She responded by saying: "No, please don’t. My life wouldn’t be worth living if people found out."

As Sparks went on to suggest, "the bonds of Afrikaner solidarity and the fear of being labelled an ethnic traitor were such that [Myrtle] was still fearful of disclosure".

Theory and practice

University of Cape Town psychologist Dr Wahbie Long, whose book Nation on the Couch: Inside South Africa’s Mind tries to make sense of the country’s mindset, believes it’s a fool’s errand to look for some consistent psychology in whistle-blowers; their motivations are complex and will differ from person to person.

But literature on the subject suggests there are points of agreement about the kinds of people who speak truth to power.

First, they value fairness over loyalty. As Tom Mueller notes in his book Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud: "Whistleblowers reveal the dark side of loyalty, patriotism, and devotion to the team, and show that other words, however debased by cynicism, still have a substance that we long for: honour, duty, justice, virtue, truth."

Their actions, however, can leave them isolated. In part that’s due to the idea of "the snitch", which academic literature suggests has tainted whistle-blowing. In certain societies the betrayal of the group is still considered socially unacceptable, as Myrtle’s fear of divulging her identity suggests.

Things are further complicated in SA by a fraught social history. For example, during apartheid impimpis, or police informers, were often killed for their crimes. It means there needs to be "a clear distinction between whistle-blowing and the actions of an impimpi" if whistle-blowing is to be promoted, says Wiener.

Whistle-blowing requires not just strong ethical beliefs, but also the ability to rise above this kind of social judgment. In Whistleblowing at Work: Tough Choices in Exposing Fraud, Waste, and Abuse on the Job, critical thinking professor and author Terry Miethe suggests that whistle-blowers often "possess personality traits that support nonconformity".

That accords with what one whistle-blower said to Mueller: "I’d never really felt part of the club to begin with." And it echoes the views of Goodson and Stimpel, who both believe corrupt organisations have characteristics of a "boys’ club". (Though, as Stimpel points out: "Of course women have joined the club. It’s an individual choice.")

What makes women whistle-blowers’ actions more extraordinary in the face of all this is that they are "more likely to suffer retaliation than men", lawyer Frederick Lipman points out in Whistleblowers: Incentives, Disincentives, and Protection Strategies — and that’s regardless of their positions within the company, which is not the case with men.

At the start of my career, I worked in the dealing room in a bank. I was told to drink whisky and play golf if I wanted to fit in … but I refused

—  Cynthia Stimpel

Lipman’s argument tallies with a 2008 study published in the journal Organization Science, which found that women who’d raised malfeasance were more likely to report retaliation in the workplace, most commonly being ostracised, receiving poor performance appraisals, being subjected to tighter scrutiny, having the information they required to do their jobs withheld, and being subjected to verbal harassment or intimidation.

Interestingly, once they’ve experienced retaliation, women whistle-blowers were more likely to report the issue externally, the study found.

"The more retaliation they faced, the more likely women were to keep fighting the battle over what they felt was wrong," study co-author professor Marcia Miceli of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business told online magazine CIO.

But this comes at a cost, as the likes of Goodson and Stimpel will know only too well. For Deokaran, the price was her life.

Blackman and Dall are the authors of Rogues’ Gallery: An Irreverent History of Corruption in SA, from the VOC to the ANC