Open Secrets

Our vision is to promote the right to truth, and contribute towards social justice by holding powerful private actors to account through research that leads to legal accountability and advocacy for change. We aim to contribute our efforts to an area of work which is currently under-served in the region, and in doing so, complement and support the important work being undertaken by partner organisations in civil society.

Open Secrets registered as an independent non-profit organisation in February 2017 and has since been pursuing work arising from its research on apartheid-era economic crimes, as well as embarking on new investigations. Open Secrets was originally established through a fellowship awarded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa in 2012, and operated as a project of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation from January 2014. Its main focus in this period was research and advocacy on economic crime during apartheid, which culminated in the publication of Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit in May 2017.