Sarika Lakraj-Naidoo: whistleblower, ‘troublemaker’, Blueprint prize winner

Sarika Lakraj-Naidoo did the right thing. She didn’t ignore the corruption that was happening around her at the City of Joburg, rather she chose to fight it. 

Five years later and Lakraj-Naidoo is paying the price. She has been threatened, survived an assassination attempt and can’t find work because she has been branded a troublemaker. 

Her story is a typical one that has been repeated across the globe where whistleblowers do what is right but end up threatened, financially ruined and sometimes dead.

Nevertheless, Lakraj-Naidoo and fellow South Africans Dorothy Mmushi and Mbuso Ngcobo have been internationally recognised for their sacrifices. They are winners of the Blueprint Africa Whistleblowing Prize for 2024.

Mmushi was a fraud investigator at Eskom who had a hit put out on her after she began looking into corruption activities at the parastatal. And Ngcobo was a key witness in a criminal corruption investigation of the mayor of Durban.

Blueprint, the organisation honouring them, is an international NGO that supports free speech and has recognised whistleblowers since 2016. It is an award that is a nod to the bravery and integrity of whistleblowers and each winner receives a trophy and a cash prize. Past winners include Chelsea Manning, a trans woman and former US soldier who leaked sensitive documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Daniel Ellsberg, known for releasing the Pentagon Papers, secrets of the US war in Vietnam; and Tesla whistleblower Lukasz Krupski, who revealed the working conditions at the carmaker.

“All of our winners this year have shown real bravery, all have experienced retaliation, and some have been left in fear for their lives. Just a couple of years ago South Africa’s Zondo commission called for effective legal protection for those who speak out. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to see real changes on the ground, which makes the example set by this year’s winners all the more important,” says Suelette Dreyfus, executive director of Blueprint for Free Speech and a member of the judging panel.

Lakraj-Naidoo was the CFO for Joburg’s department of public safety when she began noticing irregularities in 2019. 

“The first time I noticed things were going incredibly wrong was with the integrated operations centre, where millions of rand were being spent for equipment and we paid a company for a platform that was never delivered,” she says.

She also flagged an incident where a single BMW was being leased for R48,183 a month, a cost that ordinarily would have covered seven BMWs at that time.

Then there was the R200m worth of fire trucks that weren’t delivered. Lakraj-Naidoo reported this to then mayor Geoff Makhubo. “And he then called me up and he said: ‘Well, Sarika, you’ve got a fiduciary duty, and you need to report this’,” she says.

Lakraj-Naidoo did report it and other irregularities to the value of R8.2bn at the City of Joburg. She approached the city’s group forensic & investigation service (GFIS). Instead of action, she was suspended and in June 2023 dismissed after a disciplinary hearing. 

The bargaining council later found that she had been unfairly dismissed. “I went to arbitration where I was cleared of all the misconduct charges, and part of my arbitration award says that I have an outstanding record,” she says. But the damage had been done; she couldn’t get her job back.

She also began fearing for her and her family’s lives. There were incidents of intimidation. “They tried to get my son out of school by phoning the school and telling them that his mother was ill and that other people would come to fetch him,” she says. 

Then there was a shooting, where she was forced to abandon her car and flee. For safety she moved around, sleeping at different places. Friends avoided her.

When Zenzele Sithole, an investigator at the GFIS, was gunned down in his car in an apparent hit, Lakraj-Naidoo says they found dockets related to her cases in the boot.

Lakraj-Naidoo also couldn’t find work. “We [whistleblowers] are labelled troublemakers. Nobody would give us jobs because they think that we are too dangerous, because it’s obvious that a lot of companies pay bribes to get government business,” she says.

But the international award is good to get. “It was uplifting for me to be recognised in the international arena in terms of just doing what is right,” she says. But she says she would be reluctant to do it all again. The cost was just too high.