The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, OUTA, and other civil society organizations continue the search for justice for Babita Deokaran’s assassination, while politicians dither and delay.
At a small Baptist church in the suburb of Mondeor, Johannesburg, a crowd gathered on August 23, 2024, to remember Babita Deokaran three years after her assassination.
Babita Deokaran was gunned down in the driveway of her home in 2021, just three weeks after flagging R850 million in irregular payments at Tembisa Hospital. Beyond sentencing the six gunmen who conducted the assassination, no paymaster has been found or charged.
As a result, this remembrance has occurred every year since her murder, as both a support mechanism for her family and a platform to demand justice for Deokaran.
Ahmed Kathrada Foundation Executive director, Neeshan Balton, calls it an “accountability forum”, where Gauteng politicians are invited every year to speak on the progress of the investigation and answer questions the family may have.
Photo: Ruby Delahunt.
Speaking to Wits Vuvuzela, Balton expressed his disappointment at the government’s response to Babita’s assassination. “I don’t even think any senior Gauteng official met with her family”, he said, which the family later confirmed. “The Gauteng provincial government have just been…unconcerned.”
While Balton noted that “the SIU [Special Investigations Unit] have been exemplary” in their continuation of Babita’s corruption investigation, he says that most officials involved in the case have made promises but “kept none of them”.
SIU boss, Adv. Andy Mothibi, came to speak at the event, as he has done every year. He noted that the value of irregular payments has risen from the original R850 million to a staggering R2.2 billion. He confirmed that the “syndicates involved [at Tembisa hospital] are involved in other hospitals” as well – this is far from an isolated incident.
Activist and journalist, Mark Heywood, agreed with Adv. Mothibi’s assessment. “Tembisa hospital is the rule, not the exception”, he said. Corruption syndicates that exploit tender processes like this are everywhere in the Gauteng Health Department.
Gauteng MEC for agriculture and rural development, Vuyiswa Ramokgopa, attended the remembrance not in her political capacity, but as a concerned citizen. She spoke to the “micro-corruptions” that exist in everyday life in South Africa that snowball into massive abuses of power and government corruption.
Babita Deokaran was a woman of integrity, Ramokgopa declared, and integrity is “the willingness to speak truth, even when it is not easy.” Speaking the truth should not cost one their life, however.
While Babita Deokaran died fighting against corruption, and for the constitutional right to healthcare, today there is
also a daughter missing her mother; cousins missing their aunt; a home that is less bright.
The family and civil society organizations hope that by August 23, 2025, justice will be served.
FEATURED IMAGE: OUTA members dancing and singing at the remembrance. Photo: Ruby Delahunt.
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