A senior government official has conceded that a major Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) tender for indelible ink, used in last year’s national elections, might have been marred by conflict of interest.
In addition, a Mail & Guardian investigation suggests the tender requirements were breached. Expectra, the empowerment firm that won the tender to manufacture the ink locally, imported the product from India when local ink is available.
Expectra won the tender worth about R2,5-million in January 2004. The company’s current MD, Raynauld Russon, left the IEC in May that year. In October 2005, he became Expectra’s director.
”Obviously, we’re looking at a conflict of interest situation,” said Richard Levin, Director General in the Public Service Department. But he said a critical factor was the length of the ”cooling off” period between government service and related private sector activity. Russon denied any conflict of interest.
Although President Thabo Mbeki has promised regulations, there is no agreed policy on how long government employees must wait before they can work privately in similar fields. Other countries require that officials cool off for between six months and two years.
Expectra’s former MD, Gerhard Mynhardt, said he felt it appropriate to sell Expectra to Russon because the latter had left South Africa after May 2004 and had not rejoined the IEC. Mynhard formed Expectra as an empowerment partnership in which management came largely from his firm, Sygade Solutions.
Further confusion around the IEC tender concerns its local content component. The commission set 2004 as the first year it would require locally manufactured indelible ink, said Marius Steyn, the IEC’s manager of procurement. A firm that imported the ink would not have ”direct and complete control” over the manufacturing process in terms of the tender, added Steyn.
The IEC investigated Expectra to ensure that the manufacturing process met the tender requirements. Acting chief electoral officer Norman du Plessis said the service had been satisfactorily rendered and that ”I am not aware of the breach of tender specifications”.
Du Plessis said control over manufacturing referred to security considerations and successful tenderers could import ink.
Mynhard confirmed that Expectra had imported the ink from India. His company only manufactured pens to apply the ink ”on time, and of the right quality”.