ERA OF THE BRAVE

THREE ALUMNI DOCUMENT THEIR STORIES AS WHISTLEBLOWERS. IT’S NOT ONLY TESTAMENT TO THEIR INDIVIDUAL COURAGE, BUT A CALL FOR A MORE ETHICAL SOCIETY.

BY JACQUELINE STEENEVELDT

In the popular podcast series “Cautionary Tales”, economist and author Tim Harford shares a study of university students in Amsterdam. Researchers present a hypothetical moral dilemma: would you contact the university’s ethics committee to report a professor who offers to pay students money for fake testimonials in support of his project, which involves sensory deprivation of human subjects? Nearly two-thirds of the students said they would absolutely blow the whistle on the professor. But with a different set of students, the researchers staged the experiment for real. How many blew the whistle? Half? Two-thirds? Not even close – it wasn’t even one in ten. What the research roughly demonstrated was that many "talk" a big game about moral standards but fall short in practice.

When the Zondo Commission wrapped up its investigation of allegations of state capture at the end of August 2021, at least three Wits alumni were among the whistleblowers who had testified. At the commission they detailed corruption within corporations and in government in their line of work as professionals. Their testimonies are a spotlight on what Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, described as “institutional vandalism on a massive scale”.

James Themba Maseko (BA 1988, LLB 1993) testified that the Gupta brothers had attempted to strong arm him, as CEO of the Government Communication and Information System, into diverting R600 million, the entire government media budget, to The New Age newspaper. Mosilo Mothepu (BCom Hons 2002), as CEO of Trillian Financial Advisory, told then public protector Thuli Madonsela (LLB 1991, LLD honoris causa 2017) that Trillian’s owners had prior knowledge of then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene’s firing in 2015 and the company planned to profit from the information. Athol Williams (BSc Eng 1992) warned that consulting firm Bain was concealing its larger role in the restructure at the South African Revenue Service (SARS).

How were these alumni able to match their action with their intentions and choose the challenging moral path?

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For Themba, who also has an MBA from De Montfort University in Leicester, it began with a conversation in 2010 in Zulu: “My brother,” former president Jacob Zuma said over the phone, “There are these Gupta brothers, I want you to meet with them and help them.” The call lasted 90 seconds. At the Gupta residence in Saxonwold he was met with the following demand by Ajay Gupta: “I am aware that the government spends R600 million on advertising across media platforms and I want that expenditure to be transferred to my company,” Maseko writes in "For My Country: Why I Blew the Whistle on Zuma and the Guptas" (Jonathan Ball, 2021). He was astonished and refused. But he says the demand was followed up initially in a call from Tony Gupta demanding a meeting to discuss the then soon-to-be launched New Age newspaper. When Themba declined the meeting demand, which was at short notice, he received another call from Ajay Gupta for a meeting with a threat that he would be replaced by someone who would comply with what the family demanded.

His career was never the same again. Towards the end of January 2011, he was notified that a TV news channel was running a story that he had been fired as government spokesperson and CEO. He was “redeployed” to the position of director general in the Department of Public Service and Administration, but he never quite fitted in. In July 2011 he resigned from the public service.

“I defied that instruction to assist the Guptas,” he said in an interview with eNCA in May. “It was something that was contrary to my beliefs and reasons why I joined the struggle.” Themba is bookish, with large, black-rimmed glasses. He spoke slowly as if weighing up every sentence. “I must confess that I did not fully realise the impact that speaking out about state capture would have on me and my family. It came at a great cost.”

Themba was born in Dube, Soweto, the sixth of seven children. His formative experiences were shaped by the Soweto uprising in 1976. He remembers sheltering, aged 12, in the Methodist church building: “I saw several students lying outside the church building and in the street in positions that suggested they were dead. I will never forget the image of a girl with a huge wound in her neck, her mouth and eyes wide open and her arms spread out on the ground.” Despite this, he matriculated well enough to study law at university.

In 1983 he tried to apply in person at Wits, only to be told: “The only way you can be admitted is if you get permission from the minister of education to study at a white university.” His request was declined by the then minister of education, FW de Klerk, who advised he go to the University of Zululand. He spent a year there and reapplied to Wits once the entry requirements for black students were relaxed, following violence between students and supporters of Inkatha which left four students and an Inkatha “impi”(warlord) dead.

“My political activism grew by leaps and bounds after I enrolled at Wits, and for the first time I formally joined a student organisation, becoming a member of Azaso.” He was elected to numerous leadership positions: chair of Glyn Thomas House Committee, two-time president of the Black Students’ Society, general secretary to the South African National Students Congress. He later joined and represented the student movement in the executive committee of the National Education Coordinating Committee.

“My activism at Wits opened many doors for me and I got noticed by the struggle leadership. The highlight was when I was recruited to join the underground structure of the South African Communist Party and later the ANC.” The stakes for being an activist at the time were high. He never slept in the same place for two nights and endured constant raids by security police at the residence. His close friend Bheki Mlangeni (BA 1989, LLB 1999) was killed at the age of 35 after being sent an explosive package in 1991. Themba was one of the first people on the scene in Mlangeni’s bedroom in Jabulani.

In 1994 he was elected to the first democratic parliament. A year later he returned to Gauteng and was appointed as the first head of the Gauteng Department of Education. He was later appointed as director general in the Department of Public Works before taking on the role as CEO of government communications.

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Athol is a polymath. In addition to his Wits qualification, he’s earned degrees from Harvard, Oxford, the London School of Economics, MIT and London Business School. “It’s a unique combination in five different areas: engineering, moral philosophy, public administration and finance. We’re trained in one narrow area at university. As an engineer, I received no training in management, no training in ethics. It seems bizarre. I think we need more rounded people, who understand multiple areas of expertise because the world’s like that,” he says on a cold morning from Cape Town in August 2021 via a Zoom interview. He has a full salt-and-pepper beard and sits in what seems to be a small, enclosed space. He says his career trajectory was not engineered, rather it’s been guided by living by his passions and it has led to a rather “chaotic life”.

Athol was born in Lansdowne but grew up in Mitchells Plain in the Western Cape. “I see it as travelling along a path – a path of possibility. Along this path sometimes you must run, sometimes you must walk, sometimes you must stop. I have taken many tributaries off the traditional path.”

His autobiography "Pushing Boulders" (Theart Press, 2016) documents how he taught himself the science subjects he needed to get into Wits in the mid-1980s.

Through a scholarship he completed his first degree. “I didn’t know anyone who had studied engineering or anyone who had been to university. When I started at Wits, the local paper wrote an article about it because it was such a rare occurrence. I loved studying engineering but didn’t enjoy working as an engineer.”

As a way out, he pursued business. “MIT seemed the best place. I applied and by some miracle I was admitted.” He had money to pay for his plane ticket, nothing else. “I arrived in Boston at the age of 24, with only a letter saying I have placement at MIT. I didn’t know a single soul or have a place to stay. I lived homeless, while doing an MBA. I took food at events and filled my bag with sandwiches.” By his late 20s he was a successful engineer and business consultant, working internationally. Yet, at the age of 40, after the death of his father, he returned to South Africa to start a non-profit literacy organisation, Read to Rise, which has given books to thousands of South African children. In 2019 Athol was awarded the Cultural Affairs Award for his contribution to the literary arts by the Western Cape provincial government. To date he has authored 17 books, which include the children’s picture book series "Oaky", which won the South African Independent Publishers Award in 2019. He is a two-time winner of the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award and published widely in academic journals.

His range of skills was precisely why he was approached by Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston in the US. “I got involved with training the new consultants. I advised them on projects over the years.”

In 2018, while he was lecturing in values-based leadership at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, Bain approached him as an independent consultant to oversee the firm’s investigation into its own role at the Revenue Service and ultimately to write a report for the Nugent Commission’s inquiry into tax administration and management.

“By the end, I concluded that Bain was not sincere. I was scathing about the company withholding information.” He handed his report over to Justice Robert Nugent (BCom 1970, LLB 1974).

The Nugent Commission completed its final report in December 2018, accusing Bain & Company of colluding to damage SARS. Bain refunded the tax agency.

“In 2019 the global CEO apologised to me about what happened in 2018 and asked for help with implementing the recommendations. Perhaps I was foolish to believe them a second time.

“For me this was exciting because we were going to do it right.”

After six months as senior partner he resigned, citing an “explicit cover-up” and accusing the company of not being transparent.

Athol drafted his 700-page affidavit to the Zondo Commission on his own. He testified that the company was part of masterminding state capture.

“It was the pinnacle of my career, I was senior partner, with a prestigious firm, earning huge money and I knew if I blew the whistle, it would destroy my career. That’s exactly what’s happened.”

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Mosilo was raised by a deeply religious single mother who valued education. She spent her childhood between South Africa, Lesotho and Belgium. After completing her bachelor’s degree in commerce at the National University of Lesotho she set her sights on Johannesburg’s “bright lights” and Wits. She was accepted for an honours degree in corporate finance and investment. “I am a colourful character. I hated auditing; the auditors are always given the worst office – in the dungeon, without sunlight,” she jokes.

Today, she has 16 years’ experience in the financial services industry and has worked on key infrastructure projects, including raising capital for the Airports Company of South Africa in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. She recently accepted a position as a special financial and economic advisor to a cabinet minister. Her tumultuous journey to this point is detailed in "Uncaptured: The True Account of the Nenegate/Trillian Whistleblower" (Penguin Random House, 2021).

It’s not hard to see her commandeering a board meeting and she immediately takes charge of the conversation in our virtual meeting.

Her introduction to Wits wasn’t what she anticipated: “At Wits in 2001, for the first time in my life, I was treated as black – no integration, just segregation.” She was surprised to find most students in her class socialising along racial lines. “I was not like that. I would sit with anyone I got along with. I judge you by your character, irrespective of where you’re from.”

In Uncaptured she shares the patronising and racist experiences she endured as a black woman in the corporate world after graduation. Despite her qualifications she had to fight for meaningful work. Joining Regiments Capital initially in 2007, and later in 2015, under Eric Wood, she finally felt her skills and hard work were being acknowledged.

Retrospectively she admits being politically naïve. Although she felt exhilarated to be offered the post as CEO of Trillian Financial Advisory, a subsidiary of Gupta-linked Trillian Capital Partners, in March 2016, she had been given a poisoned chalice. In one instance she was asked to draft an “unsolicited bid” for Transnet’s fleet renewal and send an R11,4 million invoice for the proposal. She refused. It was sent anyway. Through the investigative stories in the media at the time, she began to piece together Trillian’s association with parastatals and the Guptas. She was CEO in name only and in June 2016 she resigned from what seemed like a dream job after only three months – with no other job lined up.

“When Thuli Madonsela was finalising her State of Capture report, I was in Egypt. I call it my Damascus moment. I asked myself: am I a good woman?’’

In Uncaptured, with her wry humour, she writes that the question that finally resolved it was: “What is more dignified – for my mother to lay a wreath on my casket knowing I did the right thing, or for her to visit me in prison bearing tampons and contraband? A wreath or tampons? For me, it was the wreath.”

Despite fearing legal consequences, in September 2016 she met Madonsela, handing over her written statement. Her disclosures, among others, resulted in the freezing of Trillian-associated company Regiments Capital’s assets and a High Court order for Trillian to pay back almost R600-million to Eskom. The Asset Forfeiture Unit froze assets worth R1.6 billion of Regiments Capital’s directors, their spouses and their family trusts.

Mosilo looks back at the experience as a test of her faith and obedience to God. “I lost a R2.3 million-a-year job and a R500 000 sign-on bonus. I lost my title as CEO. My physical and mental health were destroyed. My bond was maxed out and I had no savings. I lost my peace and security. I had nothing.”

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Professor Kate Kenny, an international expert on whistleblowing research from the National University of Ireland in Galway, details in Whistleblowing: Toward a New Theory (Harvard Press, 2019) that the act of whistleblowing comes at great personal cost. It destroys careers and damages health and relationships.

Athol has published his sixth poetry collection, "Whistleblowing"' (Geko Publishing 2021). It opens with the poem “Whistleblower’s wife”, which hints at the impact of his actions on his wife:

‘Hello sniper,’ she says, opening curtains to another bunker day… She has shrunken as their world tightened around them, a chokehold, where they expected an embrace. Every creak gets her full attention, every door rattle a defensive drill. The TV is silent, her laughter muted, heartbeat low.

There are profound psychological effects: whistleblowers are ostracised by co-workers, fired, referred to psychiatrists and sometimes disowned. They sometimes take on this experience of exclusion in their own psyches.

This was exactly Themba’s experience: “I became a professional, political and social leper, shunned by friends and enemies alike. After leaving public service, I thought the best way forward financially was to set myself up as an entrepreneur, but I had become a politically exposed person, a marked man … soon the haunting calls of creditors started ringing and the banks started calling in loans and overdrafts. “Despite my 17 years of experience in the public service and my many qualifications, which included senior executive certificates from Wits and Harvard, the private sector refused to employ me. There were days when courage and hope seemed to fail me.”

Mosilo’s psychological scars linger. She says she’s spent hundreds of thousands on medical bills.

Whistleblowers are targeted by their former employers. “It seems so stereotypical it’s like a textbook that the bad guys follow,” says Athol. “Immediately the day I went public Bain shut down my cellphone and my laptop remotely from the US. They gave me three days’ notice that they would shut down my medical aid. I am on chronic medication.

“Psychologically they questioned why I was acting so unethically claiming to be an ethical person. The most explicit thing was they offered me money and offers to relocate my wife and I outside South Africa.”

There are hefty legal bills. In October 2016, the statement Mosilo handed to the public protector detailing Trillian’s involvement in state capture was leaked to the media. Trillian filed criminal complaints against Mosilo for theft, fraud, corruption and cybercrimes for sharing company information with outsiders. After a 16-month investigation, in 2018 the National Prosecuting Authority confirmed it would not be prosecuting her, but her legal bills amounted to over R1,3 million. In 2017 William Bourdon, the French lawyer and founder of Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, offered to pay Mosilo’s and later Athol’s legal costs. In 2018, a R3 million job offer from Rob Schuter, MTN’s CEO at the time, helped to restore some faith in humanity for Mosilo.

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“All the people who harmed me acted rationally,” says Athol. “It’s like seeing a guy with a gun mugging an old lady. The rational thing to do would be to walk past and maybe do something later. Is it ethical? This is the dilemma we face. Many old ladies are being mugged all the time and we as good citizens need to respond with ethical behaviour.

“We need to move from this era of the bully to the era of the brave. It means I place myself in harm’s way. No great things happened to people who only act rationally.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Mosilo: “We all need to do so much more. We all have a part to build our democracy. Whether it’s as academics, the man on the street, the NGO, this country is worth fighting for. I have done my bit. I challenge you in your little circle, can you also do the same?”

PHILOSOPHICAL TOOLS TO GUIDE ETHICS

DR ASHLEY COATES (PHD 2017)*

We all hold a variety of moral beliefs. Some of these beliefs, such as the belief that torturing people for fun is wrong, are very widely shared. On other topics, though, like the morality of abortion or euthanasia, people often hold conflicting views. In addition to moral disagreement between people, we often find moral conflict within ourselves. It can be hard to see how to make progress on figuring out what we ought to think about moral questions.

When we reflect on our moral beliefs, then, things can seem perplexing. It seems that some answers to moral questions are better than others.

Philosophical ethics is a field of enquiry that takes up the challenge of trying to identify both better and worse answers to moral questions and better and worse ways of thinking about these questions.

Since 2002, the Wits Philosophy Department has offered a master’s degree in Applied Ethics for Professionals that aims to make the resources of philosophical ethics available to working professionals. A required course in the programme introduces participants to the methods of philosophical ethics.

In various electives, these methods are then applied to moral issues in areas such as the law, the marketplace and the environment. In each case, the goal is to use the tools of philosophical ethics to help participants think more critically and reflectively about ethical issues in the relevant domain.

As part of the programme, participants also write a research report of 15 000-20 000 words on a topic of their choosing. Topics of past research reports have included ’Ethics and Sustainable Advantage: Is it Rational for Businesses to be Moral?’, ’Reconciling “Best Medical Practice” with Scarce Resources’ and ’Ubuntu, Zimbabwe and the Ethics of Intervention’.

This training often focuses on the content and application of various ethical guidelines and codes.

For more information on the Applied Ethics for Professionals programme, you can write to AEP.Philosophy@wits.ac.za

*Dr Coates is director of the Applied Ethics for Professionals Programme at Wits