Didata’s Plett tender mess continues

Transnet CEO Brian Molefe has become embroiled in the controversial Dimension Data IT tender in Plettenberg Bay municipality after the Democratic Alliance council tried to axe him as chairman of its audit committee this week.

The Sunday Times reported that the Democratic Alliance council in the municipality, Bitou, tried to axe Molefe after he asked Bitou’s internal auditors to probe the disputed R4.3-million contract to manage the town’s IT systems without a tender.

“On Thursday a ‘special council meeting’ was scheduled to be held with an agenda to remove Brian Molefe as member of the audit committee. That same day a furious Molefe obtained an interdict from the High Court in Cape Town preventing the council from axing him,” the newspaper reported.

The latest battle comes two weeks after the Sunday times reported that the DA in Plettenberg Bay has allegedly given a company run by ‘a resident in the area’ a R4.3 million short-term IT contract without tender, the Sunday Times reported.

The contract was given to Dimension Data (Didata), a global IT company bought by Japan’s NTT for R22 billion last year. The company’s chairman was Jeremy Ord, a Plettenberg Bay resident.

The Democratic Alliance took control of the Bitou municipality in May last year. After doing so, it fired IT supplier Lefatshe Technologies because its R10 million system didn’t work.

The DA’s new mayor, Memory Booysen, said Ord then “offered to send a team down to Plett, at no cost, to evaluate our technology systems”, reported the Sunday Times.

On December 11, the DA-led council requested a “deviation from the tender process” so it could award Didata the contract “to stabilise the IT environment at Bitou”.

According to the newspaper Bitou manager Terry Giliomee, in a letter to Booysen dated December 12, didn’t receive other quotations because “there was not enough time”.

In a letter dated August 30 Bitou officials gave Lefatshe 90 days notice and said their contract would come to an end on December 31.