Gauteng High Court Declares SANRAL Road Maintenance Tender Process Unlawful

By attempting to slash its contractor base from roughly 251 providers down to a streamlined panel of just 20, the agency didn’t find efficiency—it found a legal minefield.

The fallout is total. The High Court has set aside the awards, the panel model is scrapped, and the agency is now racing to appoint new contractors by a court-imposed deadline of November 30, 2026.

The Failure of the 20-Contractor Panel Model

The trouble began on November 29, 2024, when SANRAL issued a tender to establish a panel of 20 contractors to handle Routine Road Maintenance (RRM) works across South Africa for five years. The agency’s logic was simple: managing 20 firms is less complex than managing over 251. However, the execution was anything but simple. Out of 401 bids received, only 20 were recommended.

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The resulting legal challenges from BCB Solutions and Botle Ba Afrika revealed a procurement process riddled with lapses. According to the ruling, SANRAL failed to provide requested documents in a timely manner, and the files it did provide were described as disorganised, incomplete, partially inaccessible, and materially deficient.

The court also found that the committee responsible for the awards failed to keep full minutes of their deliberations, recording only the bare resolutions rather than the reasoning behind appointing or disqualifying specific bidders. Internal probes later identified further flaws, including a failure to require price competition and non-compliance with the agency’s own tender procedures.

“We saw that there are some irregularities around how we came down to 20. And those were then declared unconstitutional, valid, unlawful, because you have to stick to the rules of tendering and how you evaluate people. And we fell short.”

Reginald Demana, Chief Executive of SANRAL

Internal Turmoil and the SCM Suspensions

While the agency prudently extended existing contracts for six months to avoid an interdict and keep roads maintained, a conflict emerged over the implementation of those extensions.

This impasse became so severe that the Board eventually recused the SCM division from RRM matters entirely, delegating those powers to the CEO under Board oversight.

When three SCM officials refused to participate in interviews conducted by an external law firm, SANRAL suspended them pending disciplinary proceedings. Those three employees are currently challenging their suspensions in the Labour Court.

The Transition Back to Open Tenders

With the panel model dead, SANRAL is reverting to the “traditional” open tender system it used prior to 2024. Chief Executive Reginald Demana has stated that the agency will now issue tenders individually in batches to ensure the national road network remains maintained during the transition.

The agency has already begun this process, with a limited number of tenders advertised in the Western Cape and Northern Cape.

• Establishing standing bid specification and evaluation committees.
• Expanding the pool of adjudication committee members.
• Strengthening internal assurance processes for high-value tenders.
• Implementing a consolidated delegations framework.

This isn’t the only procurement failure hitting the agency. A separate tender for a Category 2 engineering consultants panel was also reviewed and set aside by Judge Potterill due to similar adjudication irregularities, though Demana noted that no service providers had yet been appointed for that specific work.

The Socio-Economic Cost of “Efficiency”

Demana admitted that the agency was selfish in prioritizing the ease of managing a small panel over the stability of the businesses that had grown around SANRAL’s work.

“The efficiency of running a small panel, a small number of service providers, manageable. But what about those who were there who probably established businesses on the basis of doing this work for us? It worked for us, but maybe it could have had devastating consequences for others.”

Reginald Demana, Chief Executive of SANRAL

The agency now faces a tight window to correct its course. All previous panel appointments have fallen away, and no new work can be allocated under the set-aside tender. The focus now shifts to the November 30 deadline, where SANRAL must finalize its new open tender process or risk seeking a further extension from the court.