R3m tender goes to mother of Zuma's kids

A multimillion-rand contract for catering services for the KwaZulu-Natal legislature awarded to Nonkululeko Mhlongo, a Pietermaritzburg businesswoman, was not advertised in the tender bulletin, the legislature has acknowledged. Mhlongo is the mother of two of President Jacob Zuma's love children.

Bongani Sibisi, the chief operations officer of the legislature, conceded yesterday that while the tender awarded to Mhlongo's company, Bucebo General Trading, had been advertised in the print media, it had - contrary to legal requirements - not been advertised in the tender bulletin. The auditor-general in his report pointed out that this and many other tenders ought to have been advertised in the tender bulletin as well. Even in the case of this tender, an open briefing attended by hundreds of people was held and everything was done in an open atmosphere. Bucebo was paid R1 303 671.50 in 2008/09 and has received R2 359 880.81 in 2009/10.

Opposition parties in the provincial legislature yesterday disputed Sibisi's statement that the contract had been awarded to Mhlongo on merit. The IFP and DA suggested there had been irregularities in the awarding of the contract.

The IFP spokesman on public accounts, Lionel Mtshali, said the R1.3m awarded to Bucebo for catering in 2008/09 had been included in the legislature's irregular expenditure of R19m on catering during that year. Mtshali said the legislature had broken the law by awarding catering contracts to Mhlongo and another bidder before the expiry of the 21-day review period for tenders. "Similarly, the award of this tender was not advertised in the Government Gazette, as required by the treasury's regulations," he said. "This leads us to believe that Bucebo General Trading received preferential treatment from the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, which did not ensure that all bidding proposals for the catering tender were considered fairly and advertised properly for public scrutiny."

DA caucus leader John Steenhuisen said that further investigation into the awarding of the contract to Mhlongo was required. "During the course of the 2008/09 financial year, the Kwazulu-Natal legislature incurred a massive amount of irregular expenditure. "This overexpenditure largely consisted of catering contracts for the members' dining room and other legislature events."

Steenhuisen said that his party wanted further scrutiny of the circumstances leading to the awarding of the contract. "It is our information that several tender regulations and procedures were violated when making this award," he said. "The legislature needs to make a full disclosure on how this particular close corporation came to be awarded the catering contract so that the public can be assured that no untoward influence was brought to bear in this matter," Steenhuisen said.

Sibisi said at the weekend that there had been nothing untoward in the awarding of the tender to Bucebo. He said that the contract had been put to public tender and 53 bidders had submitted proposals. "The company was selected following applicable supply chain procedures of using bid committees to evaluate all the bids and make an award," he said.

Source: IoL