Honoring Babita Diokaran

On 23 August 2021, Ms Babita Deokaran, an employee of the Department of Health in Gauteng, was gunned down in her driveway in Winchester Hills, south of Johannesburg.

Ms Deokaran’s was assassinated because she was outraged by the rampant corruption that was unfolding at Tembisa Hospital. She had made it her business to flag all the suspicious transactions of tens of shelf companies. The database she created would later be used to piece together the syndicates behind the shelf companies’ heinous crimes.

A News24 journalist, Mr Jeff Wicks, at huge risk to his and his family’s lives, kept Babita’s story alive and followed all the leads in her database. Later, the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), would conduct deeper investigations and connect the syndicates to scores of public servants at all levels within the Gauteng Department of Health.

Ms Deokaran died fully aware of the danger to her life. However, she just couldn’t look away. Her love for our country and the people of Tembisa and Gauteng, broadly, weighed heavily in her heart. In the end, she died so a spotlight could be shone on Tembisa Hospital.

As the citizens of South Africa, we owe Ms Deokaran just one thing. Her exemplary and selfless life must be memorialized and presevered so that future generations can pay homage to her bravery and heroism.

I humbly ask you to support me in petitioning the government to rename Tembisa Hospital to Babita Deokaran Hospital.