To the media colleagues who have requested interviews, and to those who have sent private messages of support, thank you.
Every request has been noted.
Please accept this statement in place of individual replies.
My thanks also to eNCA for the platform it has given me, and to its journalists for the professionalism they have shown since this ordeal began.
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I will not conduct a dispute with my employer through the media.
My statement this week responded to a public statement issued by my employer.
It was not a response to Sunday World.
The Sunday World did not name me.
It reported on a matter of public interest, which is what section 16 of the Constitution protects, and what section 195(1)(f) of the Constitution asks of public administration.
My employer took a different course.
It approved and issued a statement naming me, and it did so through the very official who, on the department’s own report furnished to me, is recorded as having made repeated attempts to have me removed.
That report recommended that my reporting line be changed. The recommendation was not implemented.
The statement then described me as self-victimising.
Naming a whistleblower is not a neutral act in law.
Section 1 of the Protected Disclosures Act 26 of 2000, as amended in 2017, defines an occupational detriment to include being harassed or intimidated, being threatened with such conduct, and being otherwise adversely affected in one’s employment.
Section 3 prohibits an employer from subjecting an employee to any such detriment on account of a protected disclosure, and section 4(2)(b), read with section 186(2)(d) of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995, deems it an unfair labour practice.
That is, the dispute is already before the Labour Court, where my employer has met the matter with preliminary points rather than an answer on the merits.
No forum has yet ruled on its substance.
I have accepted an invitation to appear on Dr. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh’s podcast, and I have agreed to one radio interview.
Beyond those two engagements, I will take no further interview requests at this time.
I do so as a general protected disclosure under section 9 of the Protected Disclosures Act, which permits disclosure outside the internal and institutional channels where it is made in good faith, where the information is reasonably believed to be substantially true, where it is not made for personal gain, and where it is reasonable in all the circumstances, the public interest included.
I did not begin here. I disclosed to my employer under section 6, to the Minister of Transport on affidavit under section 7, and to the Public Protector and the Auditor-General under section 8.
I reported to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, consistent with section 34 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act 12 of 2004, and I have kept the Presidency, Parliament and the oversight bodies updated in writing.
Section 9(2)(c) applies because no action followed within a reasonable period, and section 9(4) treats a further disclosure about how the first was handled as a disclosure of substantially the same information.
Section 3B required a decision within 21 days, in writing, and notice of the outcome once an investigation concluded.
On the central questions that has not happened, and the outcome of the grievance I lodged on 26 January 2026 is still being withheld from me. I do not claim the word whistleblower as a badge of honour.
The status is conferred by the Act, not chosen, and in this country it carries security and psychological risk and little else.
I became one on 16 September 2024, and what has followed is recorded in audio recordings, emails and messages, including a recording in which the Acting Director-General acknowledged that I had been investigated without my knowledge.
Section 4(1) of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act 70 of 2002 permits a party to a communication to record it.
That Act does not authorise me to publish those recordings, and I have not published any of them.
They sit with the forums and the authorities entitled to receive them, and that is where I will produce them.
Section 9A of the Protected Disclosures Act protects a person who makes a protected disclosure from civil, criminal and disciplinary liability where a duty of confidentiality would otherwise bar it.
I set that out because I am a serving public servant.
I have followed every departmental process available to me, while those processes were turned against me.
My purpose is not to litigate in public.
It is to complete the record.
Proceedings remain pending, and I will confine myself to what is already public and on the papers filed.
Finally, thank you to the South African public.
Your messages have restored something the last two years took from me.
They have confirmed that I am not mad.
Sustained gaslighting has a way of making a person doubt their own record, even when that record is documented.
Thank you. Esethu Hasane
*Esethu Hasane, Director: Research and Content Development, National Department of Transport
