Gauteng security companies have served a summons on the City of Ekurhuleni to appear in court on an urgent basis.
This after the municipality refused to comply with their demands to explain how it miraculously appointed new security companies for the more than R2-billion tender within 25 days after receiving tender bidding documents.
The 10 companies, which include Khayalami Security CC, KNM Security, LL Security, and Mabotwane Security Services, among others, obtained the summons from the Joburg High Court this week.
The summons was served amid allegations that municipal officials succumbed to political pressure from opposition parties to circumvent procedures and appoint bidders of their preferences who will donate funds for their 2026 election war chest.
In the summons, which we have seen, the companies ordered the municipality to explain how its bid evaluation committee (BEC) could have possibly evaluated 231 bidding documents, send them to the bid adjudication committee for recommendation after checking them, conducted site inspections, and then appointed the successful companies in less than a month.
They believe a reasonable validity period to complete the procurement process was 120 days because each member of the BEC was expected to spend at least four hours evaluating each bid. “Although it is not yet certain on which particular day the BEC submitted its report to the bid adjudication committee, it was seemingly done within three weeks. Based on an 8-hour working day, it would mean that even without allowing for any interruption, the members of the BEC had to evaluate more than 15 tenders per day, which translates to approximately 30 minutes per tender.”
They also said in addition to evaluation, they expected site inspections to be conducted on the premises of the short-listed entities. They argued it was plainly impossible to do so within a period of three weeks.
“Not one of the applicants were contacted regarding site inspections. Because the applicants submitted duly compliant tenders, the failure of the municipality to contact the applicants to arrange for site inspections create the impression that the tender process was simply a window-dressing exercise to award the tender to the successful tenderers.”
They also said the successful companies did not recruit their own security guards . Instead they arrived at the site with Ekurhuleni metro cops and forced their guards to wear theirs.
“This creates the impression the successful tenderers never had the required security guards to render the security services,” reads the summons.
They said if the matter was to be heard in the normal court, they would not be afforded substantial redress.
The City of Ekurhuleni’s spokesperson, Zweli Dlamini, confirmed that they received the summons and will be contesting the application.
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