I find the holes in South African systems.

Then I write them up. Computer science student at Stellenbosch, security and fraud analyst at Capitec, developer and columnist at GroundUp News. Sixteen bylines, four government departments, one grant system that shouldn’t have been that easy to break.

Read the investigations See the work history

Watches the logs · poke it

Three hats

Depending on the day

All three tend to happen in the same week, usually before a deadline.

Security researcher

Red, blue and purple team work at Capitec: internal penetration testing, endpoint breakout, lateral movement, API testing with Burp Suite and Postman. Two critical internal vulnerabilities found and reported.

Investigative reporter

Columnist at GroundUp News on fraud, data breaches, RICA compliance and the state of government IT. The SASSA SRD work drew national attention and engagement with Parliament.

Developer & sysadmin

Django, Python, Linux, Nginx, Cloudflare, Azure, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Newsroom features shipped, whole organisations migrated, one DoS attack traced back to its source.

Selected work

Three that landed

Analysis · 14 Oct 2024 · GroundUp

We discovered massive fraud in SASSA’s grant system

Thousands of grants were being claimed against the ID numbers of people who never applied. The findings went to Parliament.

SASSA SRDIdentity fraud

News · 3 Jun 2026 · GroundUp

The state says its computer systems are secure. We looked. They’re not

Part one of a four-part series with Nathan Geffen on the security and usability of government’s websites. SITA’s internet services carried more than 5,000 security flaws.

Four-part seriesGov IT

Feature · 31 Jul 2026 · GroundUp

South Africans lose hundreds of millions of rands to Morita Forestry investment scam

Social media influencers helped make the scam possible, and were rewarded handsomely. The series went on to trace the police credibility and the money mules behind it.

Pyramid schemeThree parts

All 16 investigations →

Recognition