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Joburg awards R263-million water tanker tender to two 20-somethings.
With the city in the grip of a crippling water crisis, Johannesburg Water has awarded a questionable R263-million contract to supply water tankers to two obscure companies, both owned and run by directors from the Eastern Cape in their 20s.
Nutinox and Builtpro Construction have been hired to supply Joburg with 70 waters tankers for the next three years. This includes 14 tankers in Randburg, eight in Midrand, five in Marcalboro/Sandton, 12 in Soweto, 25 in Ennerdale, and three in Johannesburg Central, although the contract allows the city to order more tankers when taps run dry.
Yet amaBhungane’s investigation uncovered significant red flags overlooked by Johannesburg Water, including indications of price manipulation, hints of collusion and fronting, and the fact that until recently the two companies claimed to share the same address in Joburg’s plush Waterfall Estate.
Hard to reach
For a company that has just been awarded half of a R263-million tender, Nutinox is hard to pin down. It does not have a website, making it nearly impossible to find information about the company’s services, past projects or clients – an unusual gap for a company entrusted with the critical task of providing water to Soweto, Ennerdale and Joburg Central.
Officially, Nutinox is based at 1 Country Estate Drive in Midrand’s Waterfall Estate, but when amaBhungane visited this address there was no sign of a thriving water tanker business and neither the leasing officer nor the security guards had heard of Nutinox.
Unofficially, Nutinox is based at a residential address in Oulap street, Roodepoort.
We only know this because Nutinox submitted a lease agreement as part of its bid. When we visited the Roodepoort address, we found no sign of a thriving water tanker business there either, only a locked gate guarded by two angry dogs and a broken intercom.
When contacted, one of the owners told us: “The property at … Oulap street belongs to my wife and I, and is my place of residence. No other person or entity is renting the property. This is quite disturbing to learn about your claim and I hope that you will be able to share who fraudulently used my details.”
These addresses matter more than they would in most tenders.
Johannesburg Water scored the bids using a 90/10 points system, which allocated 90 points for price and 10 points for other criteria: 6 points for being located in Joburg, 2 points for being in Gauteng and only 2 points for being a black-owned business with a turnover of less than R10-million.
Thanks to its apparently bogus Waterfall Estate address and the house in Roodepoort, Nutinox scored 8 points out of 10. (It lost out on 2 points because it has a higher turnover.)
Nutinox’s sole director, 29-year-old Sibuyile Magingxa, was equally elusive.
Like Nutinox, he claims to rent the low-key house in Roodepoort’s Oulap street. But according to his Facebook page, Magingxa lives in Umtata in the Eastern Cape.
When amaBhungane contacted him, he said he was rushing to catch a plane and requested that we SMS him our questions. When we called again, he said he was in a meeting and put down the phone. Despite several follow-ups, he is yet to respond to any of our questions.
However, records show that Nutinox has high profile connections.
On 1 September 2023 – the day after the Johannesburg Water tender closed – Tembile Magingxa, the president of the South African National Military Veterans Association (SANMVA), became a director of Nutinox.
Tembile was also active in the uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) at the height of the organisation’s association with the Guptas and was a prominent backer of Jacob Zuma when he was still president.
The relationship between Tembile and Sibuyile Magingxa is unclear, potentially father and son or uncle and nephew. Despite repeated attempts to clarify, Tembile was not answering questions, stating over the phone: “I’m not the person for journalists or papers. Don’t ask or tell me anything. If I’ve done wrong, report it to the authorities. Don’t contact me again.”
Tembile Magingxa did not stick around at Nutinox very long though.
According to records, he resigned as a director of Nutinox three months later and handed the reins back to Sibuyile, just in time for Johannesburg Water to select Nutinox as one of the winning bidders.
Another elusive director
Builtpro Construction, like Nutinox, is difficult to locate. AmaBhungane visited its listed address at 257 Oxford Road, Illovo, but security guards told us that the company had moved to another location a few months ago.
Like Nutinox, Builtpro had used this address to score extra points in the tender, even though its stay appears to have been short-lived.
In fact, if the bid evaluation committee had been looking closely, they would have spotted that until April last year, Builtpro Construction claimed to share the same apparently bogus Midrand address – 1 Country Estate Drive – with Nutinox.
What this could have suggested to a sharp-eyed official was that the two companies may be linked, raising a red flag about collusive tendering.
Yet nowhere in the 400-page bid adjudication report – provided to amaBhungane in response to a Promotion of Access to Information Act
source:https://amabhungane.org/joburg-awards-r263-million-water-tanker-tender-to-two-20-somethings/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHaTEJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcGPCAdZJGqN47sq1gEz2KWLogufl9ORcXboeteqy2FvH7SPAAGt_XOtYQ_aem_ZKZja9lPcJgXPfJOGtJIcg
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