The Black Business Council (BBC) says it directly complained to President Cyril Ramaphosa before he announced that the Public Procurement Act regulations would be finalised in the middle of this year.
The finalisation and gazetting of the regulations will give the procurement law enforcement powers to deal with elements that have been rigging the
tender system.
According to the federation that represents black businesses, the point of contention when they met Ramaphosa recently at his official residence, Mahlamba Ndlopfu, was that the regulations were taking too long to finalise. Their concern came after the president signed the Public Procurement Act in July 2024, but it has not yet been gazetted.
This lengthy turnaround time rendered the law, a product of the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, impotent.
Once the legislation is enacted, it will be illegal to direct government officials to violate the required procurement processes. The act also protects officials from being victimised or suffering “occupational detriment” for reporting unlawful instructions.
Ramaphosa had stated that this provision was vital because “many of the abuses that took place during the state capture era involved political office bearers, businesspeople and others putting pressure on managers to flout procurement regulations”.
On Friday, BBC deputy president Gregory Mofokeng said they were overjoyed that Ramaphosa touched on both the Public Procurement Act and the government’s commitment towards an effective implementation of broad-based black economic empowerment.
Mofokeng added that he was happy Ramaphosa spoke about the establishment of specialised courts for commercial matters, especially tender disputes, which was an input made by the council.
The president decided that it was necessary to have these courts with dedicated judges and court rolls because tender disputes often caused an undue delay in the implementation of necessary infrastructure, impacting the economy.
Said Mofokeng: “Those are the issues that we are happy that the president managed to cover in the Sona. We played a prominent role in terms of making submissions to what’s in the draft regulations which National Treasury is finalising.
“In our meeting with the president we did say the process is taking way too long because the law has already been signed by the president … but it cannot be operationalised without the regulations,” he said.
“Once they are gazetted and implemented, the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act will be replaced by the Public Procurement Act,” said Mofokeng.
He said the act will fight corruption while also making the transformation process more transparent, ensuring that the best bid wins the contract, not the bid of people who are close to decision-makers.
Business Unity of South Africa (Busa) managing director Khulekani Mathe said the reforms in the public procurement system were long overdue.
“There were loopholes, and the opacity of it has also contributed to that. Making it transparent would be good for eliminating corruption.”
Mathe said despite Busa not agreeing with everything in the act, they believe it has adequate safeguards to be an improvement on existing legislation. “We are comfortable with it, and some of it will be clarified more in the regulations that will operationalise it, but I think the commitment to using that legislation to clamp down on corruption is a welcome development,” he said.
Speaking on the creation of commercial courts, he said they were a desperate attempt to deal with a situation that was fast getting out of hand.
“But if you are going to enrol matters on a normal court roll, it means that, given the congestion of the court roll, that matter might be heard two or three years down the line. What happens in the meantime is that a project is stalled.
“This is an attempt to say, ‘fine people must have recourse to justice, but let that be fast-tracked through a dedicated court’,” he said.
