The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the Public Procurement Amendment Bill (Private Member’s Bill – Honourable A. Beasley).  If passed into law, it will be an important weapon in the war against state capture and corruption.  It will give further powers to the Public Procurement Office (PPO) in its efforts to tackle the cancer of corruption across the state.

Workers have paid and continue to pay a heavy price to the state capture and corruption that has bled the state of hundreds of billions of Rands.  Many have lost jobs, salaries, pensions and medical benefits.  Scarce public resources needed to fund frontline public and municipal services have been lost leaving the working class poorer.  

In September 2025, Parliament was briefed that of 467 suppliers and individuals recommended for debarment by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), only one had been placed on the Public Procurement Debarment Register. This is a national scandal. Suppliers found to have looted the state continue to win tenders for years because many accounting officers simply fail to act.

COSATU has campaigned for a single, transparent, online public procurement system for more than a decade.  The Public Procurement Act passed into law by the African National Congress led government, however imperfect, provides a solid and progressive foundation to cleaning up the state and to supporting locally produced goods and services, jobs and businesses. 

We are deeply worried that the Western Cape Provincial Administration and the City of Cape Town’s current court challenge to the Act will, if successful, set back these collective efforts to overhaul public procurement and put in place a modern, transparent and corruption-free system binding upon all organs of state.  It is critical that a rational, out of court settlement be found and the Act be preserved. 

This Public Procurement Amendment Bill if adopted, will help strengthen the Act by:

• Empowering the PPO to step in and issue a debarment order when a state institution fails to act.
• Compelling public institutions to initiate debarment proceedings where there is evidence of corruption, fraud or collusion and to provide written reasons to the PPO if they decide not to debar.
• Setting mandatory timeframes to debar guilty parties and for the PPO to list offenders on the Public Register.
• Allowing the SIU to initiate debarment proceedings and give effect to Special Tribunal debarment orders.
• Requiring annual public reporting by all state institutions on misconduct and debarment decisions.

This is a badly needed legislative intervention. It will protect local jobs and business and help ensure investigations lead to real consequences. It will save scarce public resources, rebuild state integrity and capacity, and boost the war against state capture and corruption.  COSATU urges government and Parliament to support this progressive Bill and expedite its passage into law.

Issued by COSATU

Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)

Mobile: 082 785 0687

Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za