By Lebone Rodah Mosima
Five senior City of Tshwane officials linked to the irregular R291-million Rooiwal wastewater tender have lost an urgent Labour Court bid to stop the municipality from pursuing additional disciplinary charges based on evidence gathered by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
The city said the Labour Court dismissed the officials’ application with costs on Friday, 10 July, clearing the way for disciplinary hearings against Stevens Notoane, Thembeka Mphefu, Frans Manganye, Justice Sekokotla, and Dumisani Gubuza to continue.
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The ruling does not determine whether the officials are guilty of the new allegations. It deals only with whether there were sufficient grounds to prevent the city from proceeding with the internal disciplinary process.
The officials argued that the hearings should be stopped because of alleged unfairness, delays, prejudice and objections to the additional charges.
“In its judgment, the court held that the disciplinary hearing itself was the appropriate forum in which issues relating to fairness, alleged prejudice, delay, and the applicants’ objections to the proceedings should be determined,” the city said.
“The court further found that the applicants had not demonstrated a protectable right that would suffer irreparable harm if the disciplinary process were allowed to continue.”
Judge Benita Mandy Whitcher also found that the city had not acted unlawfully by instituting the new proceedings and that the officials’ separate review application appeared to have poor prospects of success.
The city welcomed the ruling, saying it vindicated its efforts to pursue the additional allegations alongside the officials’ earlier disciplinary charges.
“The judgment has vindicated the city’s dogged pursuit to bring new charges, in addition to the initial raft of charges, against the implicated officials and subject them to disciplinary process, underscoring the importance of allowing established labour law processes to take their course without any hindrance,” it said.
The additional charges are based on evidence arising from an SIU investigation authorised under Presidential Proclamation R138 of 2023. The proclamation empowered the unit to investigate procurement and contracting connected to the first phase of upgrades and urgent refurbishment work at the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Works.
According to the city’s case, the Blackhead Joint Venture failed to include Addendum 1 and mandatory returnable documents, including RDE5 and RDE6 forms, when submitting its tender.
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The city alleges that the missing technical documents were not available when the bid was evaluated and were submitted only about two years after the contract had been awarded. It argued that the omissions should have been apparent to the officials because other bidders submitted the required documentation.
The SIU evidence cited in the disciplinary proceedings also identified omissions relating to the joint venture’s functionality assessment, the relevant experience of its staff, contactable references and key personnel.
Despite those alleged deficiencies, the officials are accused of awarding the joint venture high scores, including full marks in some categories.
“The new evidence, therefore, elevated the misconduct of the applicants from mere ineptitude to dishonest intent to engineer the tender evaluation to ensure that the Blackhead Joint Venture was the preferred — and in fact, the only — bidder,” the city said.
“Charge one dealt specifically with the intentional failure of the applicants to disqualify the Blackhead Joint Venture on the basis that it did not include Addendum 1 and the relevant returnable documents, including RDE5 and RDE6 forms; in other words, an intentional collusion and engineering of the tender assessment to prefer the Blackhead Joint Venture,” the city said.
The second charge reportedly relates to alleged breaches of the city’s code of conduct and internal policies.
The latest proceedings follow an earlier disciplinary case in which the five officials were found guilty on one of four charges in 2023 and given a one-month suspension without pay.
The city approached the Labour Court to challenge the outcome, arguing that the sanction was too lenient given the seriousness of the misconduct. The court subsequently referred the matter back for a fresh hearing before a different disciplinary panel.
The officials then launched the urgent application to prevent the city from pursuing the additional SIU-based charges during hearings scheduled for June and July 2026. This is the application that was dismissed on 10 July.
The Rooiwal contract was awarded in 2019 to a joint venture involving Blackhead Consulting, CMS Water Engineering and NJR Projects.
In May 2025, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria declared the tender award invalid and set it aside. The court also ordered the joint venture partners to repay the profits they had made from the contract.
Blackhead, which is owned by controversial businessman Edwin Sodi and is now known as the Andani Engineering Group, has applied to have that judgment rescinded, saying in court papers that it was not properly served and had withdrawn from the joint venture early in the project. Tshwane is opposing the application.
