Pirates wanted for bounty hunting

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Hymns of the damned

There are inglorious bastards every...

Meet the "tenderpreneurs", South Africa's cheap punk, nasty, B-grade versions of ball busting Somali pirates.

JOHANNESBURG - Scrawny Somali pirates in battered boats, armed with rusty machine guns, get up to foul and disgusting things, all right. But these characters have balls that rank among the biggest in the world, to say nothing of the oceans. These pirates are at risk of being taken out - vaporised - by patrolling warships flaying flags of some of the world's richest nations. Close to a year ago, a pack of these fearless bandits captured the 330-meter Sirius Star, one of the biggest ships in the world.

Compare these characters to the spineless, gutless cowardly class of South African business persons known as "tenderpreneurs," collectively the scourge of a nation. Tenderpreneurs spend their time flagellating completely bent and twisted corrupt activities, ripping tens of billions of rands a year out of the South African economy. For budding DIY enthusiasts, the classic case on the inner workings of tender fraud was released early in 2007 with the blessing of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), based in Bloemfontein.

"Unfortunately", wrote Judge Jonathan Heher, "as experience in this Court proves, the high standards that the Constitution sets seem to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance". The judgement in Minister of Social Development v Phoenix Cash & Carry [2007] SCA 26 (RSA), describes indescribable events, involving unknown persons, not unlike the indescribable image of a person sucking the breath out of a dying cat's mouth.

Where Somali pirates face the possibility of being blasted to smithereens by high-tech howitzers of instant death, tenderpreneurs in South Africa are accustomed to using taxpayer money to fight cases where they are caught looting taxpayer money. In the vomit-inducing Phoenix case, the complainant, Phoenix Cash & Carry, sued the-then minister of Social Development, Zola Sidney Themba Skweyiya, and three of the entities that won the tender in question, Snotho Trading, MDC Catering, and Pfula Mbokoto Consortium.

Previously, Phoenix held a contract to supply food hampers to poor families in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. Contract renewals were called, with the closing date set as March 30 2005, with the aim of appointing local service providers and consortiums to supply food items to about 150 000 families. Phoenix submitted a bid which included the full nine yards - letters from Standard Bank, Newcastle Branch, a letter from Messrs Khan, Salejee & Company, Chartered Accountants, letters from six proposed commodity suppliers, and so on.

Around October 4 2005 Phoenix learnt that the tender had been awarded to the other entities. The department supplied certain information, showing, for example, that tender prices per parcel from those awarded the tender ranged between R269.10 and R299.69, more than 50% higher than the prices tendered by Phoenix.

Vomit One: after Phoenix won its case in the High Court, the matter was taken on appeal to the SCA. The representative of the department, one Ms Phemba, was unable to supply Phoenix's attorneys with the addresses of Snotho and Pfula. As such, these parties could not be served or given notice of court proceedings. "Yet", Judge Heher noted, these parties "were represented by counsel when the matter came to court. This also was unexplained".

Official records show that Snotho, a close corporation, was only incorporated after the closing date of the tender. Judge Heher found that the merits of Phoenix's tender "were so manifest and the grounds of its exclusion so flimsy that doubts are necessarily raised as to the reliability and credibility of the procurement process employed by the department".

Vomit Two: counsel representing the corrupt entities asked the SCA to make orders in their favour when such counsel did not know the true nature of the evil entities, or the faces behind them. One solution to this evil and vile practice would be to hire a few platoons of Somali pirates to come down to South Africa. Here they could be paid good bounty for bringing in screeching tenderpreneurs, led in by the testicles or the tits, and in some cases, by both.

Write to Barry Sergeant: barry@moneyweb.co.za