Rustenburg municipal manager faces jail time over six missing pages from tender document

A North West municipal manager could be jailed for claiming the municipality cannot find six key pages detailing how four lucrative information technology (IT) tenders worth millions of rands were awarded.

The Rustenburg Local Municipality and its municipal manager Advocate Ashnar Khuduge could be imprisoned after a North West High Court acting judge declared them to be in contempt of court by failing to comply with the court order granted in October 2021.

“The municipal manager (Khuduge) shall within: (a) ten calendar days of service of this judgment, file under oath a full affidavit accounting for all outstanding documents requested by the applicant (Layer 3 Telecom), attaching same and providing reasons for each missing document; (b) 20 calendar days thereafter, submit a compliance report certified by the municipal internal auditor,” reads the ruling handed down on October 30.

Midrand, Johannesburg-based Layer 3 Telecom, now known as Alicom, took the municipality to court over its refusal to provide complete documents relating to the four tenders it unsuccessfully bid for, one of which was a R15.1 million deal for IT network services and maintenance support.

The high court also ordered that should the municipality fail to comply with its order forcing the municipality to explain how the documents went missing, Layer 3 Telecom is allowed to re-enroll the matter on 24-hour notice for consideration of punitive sanctions including committal of the municipal manager or attachment of municipal assets.

In addition to a punitive cost order against the municipality, the court ordered that a copy of its judgment be forwarded to the Auditor-General SA and North West Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Oageng Molapisi for investigation into compliance lapses under the Municipal Finance Management Act.

Lebeko Modiboa, Layer 3 Telecom’s legal representative, said the municipality has failed to comply with the court order but instead filed an application for leave to appeal.

“We are opposing because it is baseless and amounts to nothing else but an abuse of court processes and state resources because so much public funds are being spent on this matter by the municipality to oppose the matter when the matter is not even complex and does not warrant any opposition,” he explained.

According to Modiboa, all that Layer 3 Telecom is asking for are documents demonstrating how the service provider was appointed by the municipality and that is all.

Layer 3 Telecom told the court that the incomplete documents provided show persistent non-compliance, discrepancies in numbering and contradictory scoring in adjudicating the tenders.

The high court found that the company meticulously identified the missing documents (six pages), which are discrepancies in the bid evaluation forms and irregular scoring patterns inconsistent with the municipality’s own criteria.

The municipality has failed to furnish the complete tender documents as previously ordered by the high court and cite administrative difficulties, change of municipal personnel and partial compliance as its reasons.

It indicated that it conducted an extensive, intensive and diligent search of its records but nothing was found, instead it uncovered mismanagement in its procurement division which led to disciplinary charges against a former procurement unit manager, who chose to resign during his hearing before it could be finalised.

Khuduge did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.