3 years after Babita Deokaran's murder: 'Difficult to cling on to hope there will be accountability'

This week marks three years since the killing of Babita Deokaran, the senior Gauteng Health Department official who was in the process of exposing massive corruption at a Gauteng hospital.

Deokaran was gunned down in the driveway of her home on 23 August 2021.

While six men were sentenced a year ago to prison terms ranging from from six to 22 years for the murder, the people who orchestrated it are still unknown.

Late Tembisa Hospital CEO was paid millions during suspension

At the time, then-health minister Joe Phaahla was quoted as saying "the plea bargain must never be the end of the case, we expect the criminal justice authorities to stop at nothing until the masterminds are brought to book".

Are the authorities any closer to solving the case?

The answer has to be "no", says News24 investigative journalist Jeff Wicks, who has been working to try and join the dots in this story of corruption and murder since the hit on Deokaran.

"It's been three years now, that's 1097 day since she was murdered in her driveway... and we came in shortly thereafter and took what she was doing and moved it forward, despite attempts to cover up what she'd found by the Gauteng Department of Health."

"No one's been held accountable and time trudges slowly on, and with that memories fade and evidence is dispensed with and it's become more and more difficult to cling to some sort of hope that there will be any accountability in this sorry saga."

Jeff Wicks, Investigative Journalist - News24

What lies at the root of the problem - an active cover-up or a general sense of passivity on the part of the role players?

Wicks says it is probably a combination of the two.

"I think at the start of this when she was murdered there was an active coverup at the Gauteng Health Department, where calls for an active investigation into Tembisa Hospital were ignored,and R100 million's worth of payments that she put the brakes on, was released."

"Now we come to the stage where this is all pushed into the public domain and we must now force accountability on the part of the Health Department and hold the police accountable for their investigation, and I'm sorry but it's disgraceful what has happened - we've had six men who took a plea in an agreement for lenient sentences on condition they named the intermediaries..."

"...And that was last year. We are now still no closer to any arrests of the mastermind, and I think from the family's perspective, that is what's most hurtful."

Jeff Wicks, Investigative Journalist - News24

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