Premier, ad agency slam tender report

Western Cape premier Helen Zille has strongly criticised a report in last week's Sunday Times on a contract between her government and an advertising agency.

Zille said the report was wrong to estimate the total communications budget at R500-million a year - and R1-billion over the two-year term of the contract. She said it amounted to, at most, R70-million a year or R140-million over two years. She said the newspaper was also wrong to state that the tender had not been advertised.

"The Sunday Times chose to ignore the facts we provided to them when we responded in writing to their questions. Instead, they 'cherry-picked' from an internal treasury document that formed part of a two-year process," she said.

"Selective quoting, outside of the context for which the document was written, made it seem as if treasury regulations had been violated and the tender award manipulated by an internal cabal. This is a complete fabrication."

The treasury report stated: "It must be noted that the bid was cancelled on three occasions" and that there was "a clear indication of the lack of adequate demand-planning procedures in place".

Zille said: "Almost every complex tender is subject to a number of internal treasury assessments. That is how we avoid corruption and receive clean audits. It is deeply ironic that one of these reports was taken out of context to imply that the DA is corrupt.

"While the provincial treasury's assessment concluded that we fell short of best practice when awarding the tender, it also clearly stated that there had been no regulatory violations and, more importantly, no corruption."

Derek Bouwer, CEO of TBWA South Africa, said: "We pitched for an account with the government of the Western Cape and not the Democratic Alliance (DA). We won the two-year account, which has been running since the beginning of this year, from the provincial government of the Western Cape and not the DA."

He added: "The value of the two-year account is between R50-million and R70-million per annum." The agency "would likely earn professional fees of between R9-million and R12-million per annum" from the contract.