Babita Deokaran's gallant efforts to speak out against personal protective equipment (PPE) tender fraud in her department cost her her life.

This is sad. A mother has to leave her kids because of corrupt officials who do not want to account for their actions.

This makes Deokaran a heroine, braver than President Cyril Ramaphosa who was afraid to speak out against corruption when he was deputy president. He did not have the guts at the Zondo commission to give details of what was going on. Is he braver now he is the president or is the radical economic transformation faction still holding him to ransom?

With corruption and fraud endemic in SA, whistleblowers plays a pivotal role in bringing wrongdoing to light. Until we start seeing people going to proper jails in shackles, in bright prison suits, their assets being seized and auctioned off, we will never see people coming forward to expose corruption.

SA needs a speak-out culture and whistleblowers to be recognised as patriots. Despite their invaluable role to society, in most cases their own outcomes are harrowing and devastating.

More government servants will be afraid of becoming whistleblowers because they get killed. South Africans need to think of our future now and vote this government out. In the current climate, you can hardly blame people for assuming that there is little likelihood of a conviction for corruption, despite arrests of seven suspects in Deokaran's assassination.

A woman is killed and there's no ANC Women's League protest; is it because they are part of the cabal that benefits from the corruption that killed Deokaran?

Kgothatso Mphuthi, Tshiawelo, Soweto