A STRATEGIC PUBLIC PROCUREMENT PARADIGM FOR SOUTH AFRICA: REFLECTIONS OF THE JOINT STRATEGIC RESOURCE (“JSR”) ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT BILL, 2023

Abstract

South Africa’s public procurement regime, established in the context of public sector reform initiatives of the late 1990s and early 2000s, requires reform. The drafting process for new public procurement legislation has been a long and winding one, and much of it has taken place beyond public scrutiny. In 2022, a revised version of the 2020 Public Procurement Bill was introduced into the National Economic Development and Labour Council (“Nedlac”).The early deliberations in Nedlac were attended, at the request of business and labour, by a small number of outside individuals and organisations with expertise in public procurement. The Task Team soon formalised this function with those individuals and organisations, styled as a Joint Strategic Resource (“JSR”), coordinated by the Public Affairs Research Institute (“PARI”), and including the African Procurement Law Unit (APLU), the Wits School of Construction Economics and Management, and Corruption Watch. A crucial aspect of JSR’s work, agreed to in principle between all the social partners, was to provide the legal basis for moving public procurement in South Africa toward a new strategic procurement paradigm. The JSR was asked to support the Task Team by theorising this concept and suggesting how it could be embedded in the Bill. The JSR prepared a proposed draft of the Public Procurement Bill, which is available as Annexure C of the Final NEDLAC Report on the Bill (“the JSR Draft”). The present contribution explains the strategic procurement paradigm that underpins the JSR Draft of the Bill. We argue that the JSR Draft demonstrates that strategic procurement is appropriate to the South African context for adoption and implementation as the key concept in a comprehensive public procurement statute.