Kusa Kokutsha, whose bid for the cancelled SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) tender for the continued management of e-tolls was R4.5bn cheaper than the second bidder, has lodged a High Court application to review the cancellation of the tender, notes a Moneyweb report.

It has also launched High Court interdict proceedings to stop the re-issued tender process, said Kusa Kokutsha company secretary Dawid Claassen yesterday.

The company is seeking the substitution of the tender cancellation decision with an order directing Sanral to award the tender to Kusa Kokutsha. Claassen added that in the face of the interdict proceedings, Sanral has given a written undertaking not to determine the re-issued tender until after judgment has been given in the review proceedings.

Sanral Engineering Executive Louw Kannemeyer said Sanral was defending that case. Claassen said Kusa Kokutsha believes the re-issued tender ‘was unlawfully and irregularly re-issued in the face of the review proceedings which Kusa brought in June against Sanral’s cancellation of the 2019 tender’.

‘In the 2019 tender, Kusa scored highest on the technical evaluation, has a Level 1 B-BBEE Status Level, is majority owned by black people and its bid was R4.5bn cheaper than the second bidder. As such, Kusa will not respond to the re-issued tender, since the tendered scope is equal to, in our opinion, the unlawfully cancelled tender of 2019. The cancellation decision was taken unlawfully and without any good reason,’ he said.

Claassen added that over the months after Sanral’s communication of the tender’s cancellation, Kusa has not been informed about the reasons for the cancellation, even after requests in terms of the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act and the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

Explaining the decision by the agency's board to cancel the tender, Sanral's Vusi Mona reportedly told Moneyweb in March that the decision ‘was informed by a review of the assurance documents from Sanral’s legal and internal audit departments, as well as expert advice provided by the independent adviser to the board’s audit and risk committee’.

The tender was cancelled when it was in the process of being adjudicated and followed Sanral confirming that its contract with Electronic Tolling Collection (ETC) for the management of e-tolls on the GFIP had been extended until December 2020.

One of the reasons cited by Sanral for this extension was to allow for the tender process to be concluded. The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) alleged last year Kusa Kokutsha was only registered as a business days after the tender was first advertised and appeared to have been set up specifically to bid for the Sanral contract.

Outa said the date on which Kusa Kokutsha was registered indicated it did not have a track record as a business and, through its directors, is linked to outgoing contractor ETC. Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage reportedly told Moneyweb yesterday it would be a cause for concern if Sanral has erred, adding that somebody at Sanral will have to be held accountable if this was proven.

Duvenage said there are question marks around Kusa Kokutsha’s B-BBEE certification but ‘I can’t see why that will be a reason to cancel the whole tender when they can just disqualify them if there is something wrong there’. He said he hoped Sanral was not manipulating the tender process to favour certain bidders and stressed the need for total transparency.

Full Moneyweb report