By Johnathan Paoli
Captain Samuel Ramalepe, flanked by Colonel Darius Ramolobe and Captain Edwin Malatjie, testified on behalf of the trio on Wednesday, saying their repeated attempts to report corruption, maladministration and criminality within the SAPS Forensic Science Services (FSS) were ignored for more than a decade.
Instead, they alleged, senior management — including former Acting National Commissioner Lt-Gen Khomotso Phahlane — presided over a system that punished whistleblowers rather than addressing their complaints.
“We are encouraged to whistleblow on corruption. But when we report on corruption, we are not protected,” Ramalepe told the committee.
Evidence leader and senior counsel Norman Arendse walked Ramalepe through a long chronology of complaints first raised in 2010, when the officers, then stationed in the Questioned Document Section (QDS), reacted to a Pretoria News article about drug thefts at the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL).
Ramalepe recalled that staff gathered at the biology section
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