The term to ‘white-ant’ somebody or an organisation means to eat the person or the organisation away by internal rot. Like a white ant, something inside an organisation is causing the organisation to fail by weakening it from within. The organisation does not know it is happening but it fails slowly and steadily.

Now, nobody who is in the construction industry can, in South Africa, have failed to notice that Group Five, a huge construction company, has filed for business rescue. In point of fact, Group Five is not alone; those that are in trouble are NMC Construction (liquidated in January), Basil Read Construction, Esor Construction and Gauteng-based privately owned Liviero Group (all going into business rescue), while others are experiencing financial difficulties.

There are others in financial difficulties. I want to give some reasons for this. Simply, the first problem is payments by provincial and central government departments for work done. Or lack thereof. Government has appointed to national positions and provincial positions (excluding in the Western Cape) persons who have no clue about construction, construction projects, cash flow, client management and so on. Thus, any construction firm can expect poorly compiled specifications, very late attention to payment certificates and general corruption in tender awards (the last is not what you think – I will get back to this).

The current Minister of Public Works is Patricia de Lille. It was during her watch, as mayor of Cape Town, that we bid on a project against a competitor. The competitor had not submitted a tax clearance certificate, had not filled out a form of offer and was not registered. We had all these things. The competitor got the job. We complained, to no avail. Rather tenuously, on this basis, I have little faith that government’s involvement in construction projects will improve. But the problem is very much this: to run big construction projects, you have to have a very good professional team, a competent construction firm but, far and away and high and above, a client who pays the invoices. We, Machoy, are still owed R95 000 by the North West provincial government. We are never going to see that. However, this is but small change, compared with money owed to the large construction companies, which they will also never see.

The second problem is the ludicrous insistence by provincial and national government departments on getting at least three offers for work by construction firms and the black economic-empowerment (BEE) requirements. Getting three offers values the abilities of each firm equally, which is just not so. Tenders normally have prequalification requirements (you have to have a certain number of staff and experience to be allowed to submit an offer) but certain firms are good at some things but not so good at others. The way we do it in South Africa is that, effectively, the lowest qualifying offer wins. This is not the best qualifying offer. Then, owing to BEE requirements, if one offer is from a firm with no BEE rating and the other has a high rating, then the first offer will have to have a price 20% lower to win the contract. Not likely to happen.

General corruption in tender awards happens when, in a firm, the final offer price is known to a few people only. The opposition firms single out a person who knows the final offer price and bribes that person to text it to them, say, 60 minutes before tenders are submitted. This is much more widespread that one thinks and it has been given the name of ‘white anting’, the process described in the first paragraph above. It has reached great steps of ingenuity: let us say I know my firm bids R112 800 for a service. Then a ‘white ant’ in my firm will subtract this number from 999 9999, giving 988 7199. The ‘white ant’ then sends a WhatsApp to the firm bribing the ant which reads, “ Hi, Johnny’s number is 021 988 7199” and disposes of the phone. This does happen. So, until we solve these issues, construction is in trouble. Here’s hoping.