The North West provincial government cancelled a cyber-security tender that had already reached the adjudication stage through the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), with the province declining to disclose the value of the procurement despite repeated questions from Sunday World.
Documents seen by Sunday World show that Sita had already begun procuring endpoint protection and cloud services for the province when the process was halted by the Office of the Premier under director-general Paul Mogotlhe, whose contract is due to end in April.
The procurement had reached adjudication, the final phase where bids are evaluated before a contract is awarded, when the province informed Sita that it would no longer proceed with the tender through the agency.
Sita confirmed the cancellation, saying, “Sita received correspondence dated 19 November 2025 on 15 January 2026 notifying Sita that the endpoint protection has been procured using alternative mechanisms at a lower cost by the client.
“The procurement was at the adjudication stage at Sita SCM, and they needed NWPG (North West Provincial Government) to confirm if they have a budget based on the actual quote from the industry. This budget was not confirmed by the client,” the agency said.
Instead, the agency said it later received a letter stating that the province had decided to procure the technology through another route. The development comes as the North West government prepares to roll out a broader digital infrastructure programme that includes broadband connectivity and cloud-based services.
In its explanation, the Office of the Premier said the cancelled cybersecurity procurement and the provincial broadband programme were two separate initiatives. “The enquiry appears to combine two separate initiatives, namely the Provincial Broadband Programme and the Microsoft enterprise licensing and cloud environment,” provincial government spokesperson Brian Setswammung said.
Setswammung said the broadband programme itself was not implemented because of a procurement deviation. Instead, he said the province was participating in an existing contract awarded by another organ of state, as permitted under Treasury Regulation 16A6.6. He further added that the contract being used had already been audited by the auditor-general.
The provincial government also said the Microsoft licensing, cloud and cybersecurity environment form part of the government’s enterprise software licensing framework.
“These services are procured through the existing Sita Government Framework Agreement for Microsoft licensing,” Setswammung said.
“This is a Sita-sanctioned and approved agreement.”
However, Sita’s response suggests the agency was not formally involved in the decision to halt the procurement process it had already initiated.
Sita explained that ICT infrastructure services for the government are classified as mandatory services under the State Information Technology Agency Act and are normally procured through the agency.
Where departments bypass the agency, Sita warned that there could be compliance risks.
Sunday World sent questions to Mogotlhe and the North West Provincial Treasury regarding the cancellation of the Sita tender and the value of the procurement. The provincial government failed to disclose the value of the cancelled tender.
Large government technology contracts often run into hundreds of millions of rand. Similar disputes over broadband procurement have occurred in other provinces.
In the Eastern Cape, the provincial government initially attempted to piggyback on a broadband contract from the Western Cape government, which was challenged by Sita in court.
Khuselwa Rantjie, a spokesperson for the Eastern Cape government, stated that the matter had been settled.
“The total value of the project is R6.2-billion over ten years up to March 2029, and it is meant to provide high-speed broadband services in 2 700 government sites over the period of the contract,” Rantjie said.
Questions were also sent in vain to the Gauteng Department of e-Government and the Limpopo provincial government regarding their technology procurement models.
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