Firm fights tenders mafia

The latest victim of a “business forum” which has been hijacking construction sites demanding jobs and a slice of the profits spent on Tuesday hiring armed guards and preparing an urgent high court interdict application to fend off a threatened takeover on Thursday. “I will not be intimidated. I will not bow to their demands and I will not shut down the site,” Elias Mechanicos, the owner of Elias Mechanicos Building and Civil Engineering, told The Mercury on Tuesday in the wake of the threats by the group. “I have contractual obligations to the city, my staff, suppliers and subcontractors.” The business forum, based in Umlazi, has been targeting businesses and disrupting municipal services for the past few months because, it alleges, its members are not being awarded municipal work. Labelling them “thugs”, city manager S’bu Sithole has already obtained a high court interdict against the group. But this has done little to deter them. Attorney Peter Barnard of Cox Yeats told The Mercury that eight of his clients had been “affected by this crowd”. Most, he said, were trying to “co-operate and co-exist” with the forum.

But Mechanicos said he was not prepared to do so. His construction company has been on site near Springfield Park since last year, building a R120 million city fleet facility for the eThekwini Municipality in terms of a tender award. The site has already been shut down this year for eight weeks - costing at least R140 000 a day - because of protest action by the local Ward 25 community. That was resolved recently and work started again on May 19. But on Monday afternoon a group of 15 to 20 men - claiming to be from the Delangokubona Business Forum - frog-marched the security guard to the main office and demanded to see the management. They demanded that 10% of the contract value be subcontracted to them, and said they would be back on Thursday and, if their demands were not met, they would shut down the site. The urgent application for an interim interdict aimed at thwarting any illegal activity has been set down in the Durban High Court for 2pm today. In his affidavit, quantity surveyor Declan Weyers said the group arrived on Monday “unannounced”.

“I was taken aback by the sheer numbers... I began to become intimidated as soon as we went into the spare office. All 15 crammed themselves in and began interrogating me. “They were constantly talking over the top of each other, they were rude and quite aggressive. They were insistent on wanting to speak to someone who had authority to make decisions.” Weyers said the men demanded to see a copy of the contract with the city, a copy of the bill of quantities submitted with the tender, what the contract value was for BEE expenditure, and insisted that work up to 10% of the contract be subcontracted to them. “I indicated that I did not have the documents available. In the back of my mind I was questioning who on earth these people were... My responses seemed to placate them. “They insisted that a meeting would take place at 7am sharp on Thursday (tomorrow).

“They said a person with authority had better be there”. They wanted a formal agreement in place by the end of Thursday.” He said he tried to explain that there was a procedure in which the company had been instructed by the employer (the municipality) to work with the ward councillor and two community liaison officers for the appointment of local labour. In response, one of the group said they knew the representative of the municipality and there would be no difficulties. Weyers said he was shaking when they left, their parting shot being “we will shut the site down”. He said he had learnt from Barnard that two similar urgent applications had been launched recently, which “mirrors my encounter”. In one instance, staff were sent home for their own safety and to defuse the situation. Weyers said the police had been contacted but so far had failed to respond, so the company had approached two private security companies.

The Mercury was unable to contact forum chairman Nathi Mnyandu on Tuesday. But in recent newspaper articles he has been quoted as saying that the group was made up of ex-convicts who wanted to stop using crime as a means of making a living but were being “left out” by fake bidding processes.