Both parties in the ongoing litigation around the award of a R10 billion contract by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) for the distribution of pensions and social welfare grants have filed submissions to the Constitutional Court.
This comes after losing bidder AllPay, a unit of big four bank Absa, turned to the Constitutional Court in yet another attempt to have the multibillion-rand tender process declared invalid.
Last year, Net1 subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) won the R10 billion tender from SASSA to distribute social welfare payments to 9.7 million South Africans every month, for five years.
AllPay took the matter to court, arguing that CPS's win of the multimillion-rand deal was unlawful, after which the North Gauteng High Court ruled that, while the deal was illegal and invalid, it would remain in place so that payments could continue. The case was taken to the Supreme Court of Appeal, which ruled in March that the tender process followed by SASSA in awarding the contract was valid and legal.
New evidence
However, AllPay has filed leave of appeal to the Constitutional Court, arguing that constitutional requirements of fairness in procurement processes were infringed and that the Supreme Court was wrong not to listen to new evidence.
The new evidence is based on a secretly recorded conversation between Roedolf Kay, national co-ordinator of the South African Older Persons Forum, and John Tsalamandris, an apparently disgruntled SASSA employee, who took minutes at the tender bid committee meetings. On the recording, Tslalamandris supposedly makes a number of vague allegations that suggest the tender process was corrupt.
CPS says, however, that this evidence is not new and that AllPay had the recording in its possession for more than a year before it brought its first court case against SASSA and CPS.
The company claims AllPay chose not to have the recording admitted as evidence. It was only after the Supreme Court hearing that AllPay tried to introduce an affidavit based on the Kay/Tsalamandris conversation, but the Supreme Court refused to hear it.
'No irregularities'
CPS, which filed its submissions yesterday, says there were no irregularities in the bidding procedure. CPS now distributes more than a billion rand a month to South African grant-holders and their beneficiaries, and has stated in court papers that it has spent R1 billion to establish the infrastructure necessary to do so.
In the court papers, CPS states that "any disruption to this provision would cause untold human suffering and inconvenience to the most vulnerable members of society and is plainly not in the interests of justice".
The company points out in the court documents that SASSA's requirements were made clear in the original request for proposals and that CPS could fulfil these requirements while AllPay could not.
It also emphasises that AllPay never raised any concerns during the tender process, but only after it lost.
AllPay was unable to comment by time of publication. The matter is set to be heard on 10 September.
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