Tshwane's DA mayor Randall Williams has been embroiled in a war of words with his municipal officials over his apparent instruction that they issue a R26bn energy tender without embarking on an open tender process.
A recording was this week leaked to TimesLIVE in which Williams can be heard taking the city’s officials to task after they questioned his instructions that they approve an unsolicited energy bid without going out for public tender.
In the recording Williams tells several officials, including chief operations officer James Murphy and acting city manager Mmaseabata Mutlaneng, among others, that theirs was not to question but to implement his decision.
This comes after Williams was approached by private energy suppliers about the leasing of the city-owned Rooiwal and the Pretoria West power substations, which have been out of service since 2014.
A private consortium has proposed that it could cushion the city from Eskom load-shedding by revamping the aged power station in a project that envisions adding 800MW of power to Tshwane's grid.
In the recording, Williams boldly tells his officials that the city must award the R26bn contract to refurbish, maintain and turn two coal-powered stations into gas and bio-gas stations to a consortium headed by Australian company Kratos Energy without putting it out for tender as he believed only the consortium had the capability to provide such a service.
This flies in the face of public procurement laws and regulations as they do not allow political office bearers such as mayors to meddle with tender processes.
Williams is alleged to be pushing for the approval of the unsolicited bid even though city officials have warned him that his preferred bidders were offering old technologies that could cost the city much more than the R26bn in the next 30 years.
“I’ve taken that decision. I hear that unfortunately among our officials the views were expressed that it's their decision that we must refurbish the power stations as coal-fired power stations,” Williams can be heard saying in the recording.
“By you expressing that opinion you are contradicting an executive decision that I’ve taken and you have no power to think that you could adopt such a decision as officials.”
It was not immediately clear when the meeting took place.
But the DA was this week forced to abandon its plans to table in the municipal council a report on the unsolicited bid after one if its coalition partner in Tshwane, ActionSA, spoke against it.
In the heated meeting, Murphy and other officials were at pains to convince their mayor why due diligence had to be conducted before approving the unsolicited bid.
Murphy also told Williams that the proposed tender did not meet their unsolicited bid requirements and should go out on public tender.
“I’m saying allow us to do our own due diligence, there are a number of mistakes in the summary documents they gave us, we advise them, ask the city manager, we advised them go fix ABC and D, and I was saying if they are so confident about their product and what they present why are they so scared of going on a two-stage bidding process? Why?” Murphy asks.
“I am just asking, and pleading with you executive mayor, I will not disrespect you, I have the highest respect for you and I regard you as a highly intelligent person, but I am asking you to allow us to work through this thing so that if something goes wrong and you have given us time to go through what we need to go through you can write and say, officials go and answer on this thing, or James and Frans, your heads must roll because you have not followed due diligence, you did not follow the latter of the law, you did not consult National Treasury.”
Murphy said the Treasury was also against approving the unsolicited bid.
Another official, identified as Steven, can be heard warning Williams against involving himself in procurement processes.
“The fact that you have seen it is a problem as James has already said. And, EM, it sounds like you’ve read it and that’s a problem in terms as I understand ... ”
Steven further says: “There is a political risk in this in terms of what we’re doing is proposing an unsolicited bid on a mature technology, it’s not a unique technology, and it’s also not a unique funding mechanism.
“Politically there is a risk in terms of what’s happening in this room right now, I do think that needs to be taken into consideration for your protection and the administration’s protection,” he says.
Murphy also put it to Williams that, when he did a desktop background search on Kratos Energy, he found little information.
“I tried to Google this company, Kratos Energy, or specifically this consortium, I couldn’t find them anywhere. Kratos Energy is an Australian company and they are specifically into solar energy. I couldn’t even pick up if they are at all registered, which, by the way, is one of the requirements,” he said.
Williams, in response, said the consortium comprised leading companies in the oil energy sector that were already trading with another DA-led municipality, Cape Town.
“The consortium has apparently been registered, but the consortium consists of important partners ... So it’s a consortium that was put together out of big names of companies.”
The contents of the recorded meeting has the potential to collapse the DA-led coalition in Tshwane after a crucial partner, Action SA, threatened to report Williams to law-enforcement authorities for his alleged involvement in tender processes.
ActionSA is said to have called for Williams to be removed as mayor.
