New Sanral board drives procurement reforms

The South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) says ongoing reforms are currently underway in the roads agency’s procurement environment under the leadership of the newly appointed board.

Sanral media relations manager Lwando Mahlasela confirmed this to Moneyweb in response to a query about what Sanral is doing to prevent the recurrence of serious procurement irregularities uncovered and highlighted in a number of recent high court review applications.

Mahlasela said Sanral is committed to the rule of law, clean governance, transparency and accountability in its operations.

“To this end, Sanral will study what has been highlighted in the recent high court review applications.”

A number of recent successful high court review applications launched by bidders who were dissatisfied with tender awards exposed serious and significant irregularities in Sanral’s procurement system, resulting in costs awards – in some instances even punitive cost awards – against the roads agency.

This resulted in Sanral indicating it would lodge self-review applications to review and set aside these tender awards and cancel the tender awards.

Mahlasela said investigations are ongoing to take “disciplinary action and/or consequence where any oversight, malfeasance or unlawful conduct may have occasioned the irregularities uncovered”.

He said reasons for irregularities differ from human error or misunderstanding to deliberate misconduct – and these must first be determined through proper investigations to determine the cause without making any premature announcement or action being taken.

“Consequence management is a standard documented process to deal with conduct of this nature,” he said.

Outa encouraged

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) CEO Wayne Duvenage feels the new Sanral board is a vast improvement on the prior board, whose term should have been terminated some time ago and should never have been renewed for another three years.

Duvenage believes the new board has an appetite to clean up and investigate.

He wants the new board to delve into all the irregularities over the past years and implement an independent forensic investigation into all of these issues, not only the tenders but other concerns that have been raised, such as the changes to the structures the previous board put in place, which must be reversed.

Duvenage says the forensic investigation needs to uncover what happened, and then put in place corrective action.

He says Sanral must also go after and hold accountable those who have blatantly and deliberately abused their power and interfered in the operations and potentially been involved in corrupt activities.

“They must follow through the consequences, not only internal people being dismissed or being put through disciplinary hearing processes, but external people who have left and ex-board members if they uncover direct interventions and interference that is criminal and lay charges.

“That is the only way it stops. They have a disciplinary hearing and fire them or the board will say ‘that is the past board and we must move on’.

“Don’t move on, hold them to account. If there has been criminal activity you bring the Hawks in, give them all the evidence and lay criminal charges against those individuals that may longer be part of Sanral,” he said.

Reviews and self-reviews

Mahlasela said Sanral currently has six matters before the high court for review and the Zutari and Lathiso litigations have been finalised.

Zutari and Lathiso successfully applied for the award of a Sanral tender – to establish a panel of engineering consultants for periodic and special maintenance – to be reviewed and set aside, with the High Court in Pretoria declaring this tender unlawful and constitutionally invalid.

Mahlasela said Sanral has conceded and will self-review to set aside three tender awards based on material irregularities uncovered following a merits assessment and investigation or forensic investigation.

These are:

• The tender award to establish a routine road maintenance panel, which was challenged by BCB Solutions and Botle Ba Africa;
• The award of the R1.57 billion Masekwaspoort tender to the China State Construction and Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) in a joint venture with Base Major, which is being challenged by unsuccessful bidder Hillary Construction; and
• The tender award that was challenged by RoadMac Surfacing based on irregularities, including that the bid validity period had expired at the time the award was made.

Mahlasela said a review application has been lodged by Batalala Consulting to an engineering tender award, with the replying affidavit awaited.

He said Sanral has successfully defended two review applications but the applicants have appealed.

These relate to an insurance cover tender judgment that is being appealed by FIPRO Investments CC and an appeal lodged by WIB Intellitech against a 2026 judgment on a provision of SAP services tender.

Defence of review applications to continue?

Moneyweb asked Sanral if it has considered changing its past strategy to defend review applications in light of its poor record in successfully defending these applications – because of the serious irregularities uncovered in the procurement processes, and the possibility of the Auditor-General considering the court costs incurred in defending these matters as fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

Mahlasela said 90% of review applications against Sanral come as urgent applications with a ‘Part A’ seeking to interdict, with very truncated timelines to oppose and file.

He said it firstly urgently appoints a legal team, files a notice to oppose and conducts a merits assessment for the purposes of defending the interdict proceedings because of their implications on Sanral’s operations.

“Since 2025, Sanral has either conceded after a merits assessment on allegations and adopted a self-review process or, as has been done recently, conceded on the merits based on a positive verification and identification of irregularities,” he said.

“These irregularities in most cases, if not picked up during the different tender stages, are observed when there is litigation.”

Mahlasela stressed that the appointment of a legal team ensures Sanral receives speedy legal advice on the merits and its prospects of success on the grounds for review by applicants.

He said a concession or self-review, following legal counsel advice on the merits, demonstrates Sanral’s commitment to fair and transparent procurement process and willingness to self-correct where court applications elicit factually present irregularities.

“By conceding to irregularities, and to the review and setting aside of unlawful or irregular tender process, saves costs by shortening litigation costs and playing open cards with opponents and the courts.

“Employing a legal team and counsel to advise on the merits and prospects cannot be fruitless and wasteful expenditure,” he added.

“Only an assessment of the merits and prospects of success, preferably with assistance of a SC [senior counsel], can provide firm advice and indication on whether to litigate all the way to judgement or to concede or self-review a tender process.”

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.