Johannesburg – A staggering half a million rand to convert one classroom into a mathematics laboratory. That is what the Free State department of education paid a contractor.
Now competition bids’ documents and pricing for this overly generous tender for the building of classrooms – at a cost of just above R500 000 a class – are missing, Sunday World can reveal today.
A forensic audit by PwC found that the department headed by Tate Makgoe paid a whopping R352-million to Eduscimat, an entity owned by businessman Peter Sebiloane for the conversion of 701 classrooms at an average cost of R502 000 a classroom across the province’s five districts in a transaction PwC determined to amount to irregular expenditure.
The money was paid to the contractor between November 2012 to June 2017.
“We were unable to obtain the bid documents and bid price of the bidders who did not pass the functionality criteria, as a result, we were unable to determine whether the department incurred a calculated loss,” a PwC report dated November 14 2019 reads.
“The department should continue its search for the relevant tender documents for the E9/2012/2013 tender. Once obtained, the department should compare the prices tendered by the other tendering parties with that tendered by Eduscimat.”
PwC further found that the department ignored legislation when it contracted Eduscimat as the function to procure IT-related services fell within the domain of the State Information Technology Agency (Sita).
“The department opted to acquire the IT goods directly from the successful bidder and not through the Sita transversal contract. Not procuring the IT goods through Sita was a transgression … the result is that the expenditure meets the definition of irregular expenditure.”
Sources within the department said they have tried over the last three years to track the competing bidders’ documents to no avail, with the suspicion that other bidders had a much lower price.
PwC recommended that the department take disciplinary action against 21 of its employees who participated in the awarding of the contract.
Chief among the people implicated by the PwC report is Dr. Mamiki Maboya, who chaired the bid specification and evaluation committee.
Maboya has since risen to lofty heights in the department and is currently head of curriculum policy support and monitoring in the national Department of Basic Education.
The unit’s purpose is to develop curriculum and assessment policy and support, monitor, and evaluate curriculum implementation.
Adding salt to the wound, a project report by Eduscimat, which Sunday World has seen, reveals that the project experienced several challenges including:
- underutilisation of the maths labs by schools;
- lack of integration of the maths labs resources into day-to-day teaching and learning programmes;
- lack of, or no interest in the maths labs resources by “critical” stakeholders; and
- schools disconnecting the maths labs to use classrooms as normal classrooms.
“It has been rocky but at the same time, a good learning curve for all of us … the lessons learned will be very useful in the future implementation of such a project. Free State shall remain a very important part of the history of Eduscimat and would want to register our gratitude to the entire department of education,” the company’s managing director Newyear Ntuli wrote in the report.
Speaking at the launch of the project in 2012, Makgoe indicated that the auditor-general’s office had had issues with the contract.
“One thing that is problematic in government is that ministers or MECs are told to think out of the box.
“When you think outside the box, you’ve got auditor-general telling you that there are no rules to say these things this way,” he said at the launch, which was attended by
several dignitaries, including Sebiloane and Maboya.
“I have been a MEC for 17 years and I am prepared to be fired as I am going to take chances, sometimes it takes the brave to sit in a boardroom and say that it’s gonna
happen,” Makgoe said.
“We had to find a way to deal with government procedures that are very difficult, where we are told to check if there are any companies doing this in the country. I said that we had gone through the internet, and we had found that there is no company in South Africa that can do this.
“We cannot wait for two or three years to do this, and this is now history. We need to prove to white people that mathematics has no race. We are going to launch these 200 labs. There is no way we can have a future without mathematics,” Makgoe said.
Speaking to Sunday World on Friday, an angry Sebiloane said: “I can only respond to what I know as this is politics and I am not going to be dragged into that. I have done nothing wrong. I have done my job as I didn’t eat the department’s money and if there was a problem, I was not going to hide it. I was paid for everything I have done … I am not happy that you are targeting me as a black person, and my heart is sad that the department should respond to your questions.”
Makgoe’s spokesperson, Howard Ndaba, did not respond to questions sent by Sunday World. He has over the past three weeks ignored efforts to solicit comment.
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