5 December 2023
Mzukisi Makatse, who refused to sign off on a National Lotteries Commission grant and was fired, has won an international whistleblower award. Archive photo: Raymond Joseph
Former National Lotteries Commission employee Mzukisi Makatse, who paid a high price for blowing the whistle on a dodgy Lottery grant, has won an international award that celebrates whistleblowers.
Makatse is one of five South Africans whose bravery in the face of personal danger has earned them the award. Several other South Africans have been recipients of these awards in previous years.
A total of 11 whistleblowers from around the world were acknowledged in the annual awards presented by Blueprint for Free Speech, a charity which works to promote freedom of expression. The winners will receive £2,000 - about R47,500 - each.
When Makatse refused to follow an instruction to sign off on a multimillion-rand Lottery grant for a for-profit music festival, he was suspended and subsequently dismissed. The grant was paid out within days of his suspension.
After losing his job, he fell into a depression which damaged his relationship with his fiancée, who is also the mother of his two children. He also lost his car because he could not keep up the payments and was forced to move into a small room inside a factory in an industrial area of East London, while he tried to get back onto his feet.
Earlier this year, GroundUp published an impassioned plea by Makatse and fellow Lottery whistleblower Sello Qhinas highlighting the plight of employees who “lost their jobs for blowing the whistle on irregularities, malfeasance, and corruption at the NLC”.
Both are being considered for compensation for what they went through, as part of a reparation process the NLC is undertaking.
The other South Africans who won a Blueprint for Free Speech award in 2023 are