Government deals with approximately 4 000 tenders each day and it’s impossible to know what’s happening with every single tender, according to chief procurement officer Kenneth Brown.

Brown, who was part of a panel discussion on the progress made by the national procurement office, said South Africa has had a very fragmented procurement system until recently with close to 1 050 procurement entities spending more than R500-billion a year on goods and services.

The national procurement office was set up within the National Treasury to fix the way the state buys goods and services and to help fight corruption in the system.

When the office was established, National Treasury had to decide what gets priority: fighting corruption or modernising the supply chain management system. Brown said the focus shifted towards modernising the system first as an aging system won’t pick up on irregularities in the first place.

Subsequent to the establishment of the procurement office, an e-portal, where are all state tenders are advertised and information can be downloaded free of charge, was set up.

“We have realised the e-portal – if structured correctly – could be a magnificent source of intelligence,” Brown said.

However, the e-portal is not fully functional as yet, a fellow-panellist, Carlene van der Westhuizen, research fellow at the International Budget Partnership, pointed out in her turn.

“The biggest challenge for the public is to get information about tenders,” Van der Westhuizen said. “Certain tenders are just not available on the e-tender portal, like a tender in the Health Department in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape Education Department. We also found that although certain tenders were advertised the bid documents were not downloaded.”

In addition, it proves difficult to access bid documents for school infrastructure and information about the winning bidders and the bid register are also not readily available.

Karabo Rajuili from the Amabhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, who was also part of the panel, concurred that it was difficult to access tender documentation as part of the centre’s investigative work.

The centre struggled to gain access to tender documents in the investigations preceding exposés of state capture by the Gupta family at the Passenger Rail Agency South Africa (Prasa) as well as information on the nuclear procurement by Eskom. “We struggle in our investigations to secure information,” Rajuili said.

Supply chain management processes in government – also at local level – are shrouded in opacity, she added, citing the awarding of a paraffin tender in Tlokwe Municipality and the sale of land in Cape Town.

“In our investigation into unsolicited bidders in the procurement processes with the sale of land by the City of Cape Town our attempts to get information were rebuffed and the City was unwilling to disclose information.”

Rajuili was referring to an article Amabhungane published in the Mail & Guardian in November last year about an alleged campaign driven by Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille to sell a stretch of land in Clifton to private developers. According to the article, there was an unsolicited bid by a private consortium that involves two of De Lille’s acquaintances – businessperson Mark Willcox and property developer Tobie Mynhardt.

“The City of Cape Town’s stance is of great concern because we believe in this particular case there was a possible conflict of interest,” Rajuili said.

According to her, for South Africa’s supply chain processes to be fully transparent the public needs to not only know who the bidders are, but also who serves on bid adjudication committees.

“We need to know how these committees are formed and who the owners of the bidding companies are. That will tell us who is ultimately to benefit (from a tender).”