KEY POINTS
- The Gauteng High Court has refused former OCJ officials an opportunity to participate in a tender review case.
- Millar finds that, legally speaking, their challenges do not influence the merits of the case.
- An allegation brought against the Secretary General by a former official is dismissed.
The Gauteng High Court rejected an application from three former senior officials at the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) to take part in a high-profile case investigating procurement errors in choosing Thomson Reuters (Professional) UK Ltd for a tender.
The court ruled that the officials —Nicolaas Coetzer, Nkosikhona Mncube and Yvonne van Niekerk—must pay punitive costs because it rejected their move to join the OCJ’s action to set aside the 2021 contract on CaseLine court online.
Tender and conflict of interest
The Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) awarded the job to Thomson Reuters to supply tools and support for the digital court filing system currently active in Gauteng and soon to expand nationwide. Later, investigators discovered that Thomson Reuters had subcontracted the work to ZA Square Consulting a local firm owned by three former OCJ directors.
Although Thomson Reuters later canceled the subcontract and the three officials resigned, the OCJ launched a self-review of the original tender due to the suspected misconduct.
Officials were unable to take part
They tried to intervene in the self-review, saying that untrue comments about them in court papers might affect their reputations and prospects as business owners. No one objected to the decision to set aside the tender.
Still, Judge Anthony Millar denied their application and said: A school board sees teachers’ conduct the same way it would any employee’s, past or present. There is no reason for the application and therefore it should be refuseddue to procurement irregularities.
Fines and allegations that don’t hold up concerning the procurement irregularities
In his statement, Judge Millar dismissed claims made by Coetzer against the former Secretary General of the OCJ, considering them scandalous and vexatious.” The judge explained that the comments aimed to damage the Secretary General’s reputation and did not address the core legal issue.
As a consequence, the court gave Coetzer, Mncube and van Niekerk a punitive cost order for their actions that the court considered an abuse of the judicial process.
