The Sekunjalo Consortium’s ability to carry out the lucrative task of policing South Africa’s marine resources has been questioned in new documents before court on the grounds that it represents a conflict of interest, and the bid scoring procedure by an evaluation committee was dodgy.
Smit Amandla Marine alleges in supplementary affidavits to the Western Cape High Court that Sekunjalo – a prominent black empowerment company headed by businessman Iqbal Surve – aims to poach its staff to run eight research and patrol vessels, including the Sarah Baartman, the Victoria Mkhize, the Lilian Ngoyi and the Ruth First.
It argues that Sekunjalo cannot act as a policing agent of fishing resources while also having a subsidiary company, Premier Fishing – which was also a bidder – involved in the fishing industry.
Sekunjalo is poised to take over this role from April 1.
It also argues that having studied the taped records of the bid evaluation committee – for the R800 million contract over five years – it believes that the body did not apply its mind adequately to the six bids.
The scoring procedures, it alleges, were also deeply flawed and one bid evaluation member had given Smit Amandla Marine one point on technical ability, while scoring Sekunjalo – which has not been involved in the business until now – a full score.
Smit Amandla, the local black empowered subsidiary of the Dutch-based multinational ship managing group Smit, had operated the tender to manage and maintain marine research and fisheries patrol vessels for the past 10 years.
It lost a bid in November to operate the tender for a further five years. It then sought an interdict in December against the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries seeking to stop it from awarding the tender to Sekunjalo.
The department has pointed out that in terms of the law it could not extend the contract beyond two terms and was obliged to put the contract out to tender.
In the supplementary affidavit presented to the court on Tuesday, Caven Leale, the director of Smit Amandla, said that in the Sekunjalo document, the consortium indicated that: “It is the intention of (Sekunjalo) to re-employ as many of the current crew and employees that are working on the department’s vessels.”
Kaveer Bharath, Sekunjalo’s spokesman, last week said his company could not comment on the matter as it was before court. However, in December he said that the announcement of its successful bid had been done in the presence of the Black Management Forum, the Black Business Council and other black business groups.
It was Sekunjalo’s view that the provision of services relating to this contract, including staffing of the marine vessels, would be “a huge empowerment lever”, Barath said.
“The single most important thing to do is to open up this industry which has been a concentrated white industry in South Africa.”
Smit Amandla argued that a conflict of interest arose from the fact that Sekunjalo Investments owned 80 percent of Premier Fishing and the two entities had three directors in common.
Bharath said in December that the policing work of the patrol vessels was “a national security issue” and once the vessels left the shore this information would not be available to Sekunjalo management in any form. Thus a conflict of interest would not arise.
Bharath also argued that the bid evaluation committee was a multi-departmental, independent, highly representative and technical body. - Donwald Pressly