Scribante seeks damages in battle over tender

durban - pepi silinga, the chief executive of the coega development corporation, could be facing a defamation claim from scribante construction after he accused the company of fraud and dishonesty in court papers relating to a battle over a coega tender.

deon smit, a contracts manager at scribante, said the company "has already instructed its legal advisers to recover the damages that it may suffer as a result of silinga's … defamatory conduct".

this emerged from court papers filed in the port elizabeth high court late last week.

silinga, in a presentation to coega staff in july entitled the scribante case, also linked the construction company to the poverty experienced by black people in south africa and elsewhere in africa.

smit said this had been done "in a manner that incited racial discontent". coega previously denied that this presentation was a company document. smit said the scribante family was appalled and hurt by this shameful attack.

coega is developing the industrial development zone next to the port of ngqura.

vuyelwa qinga-vika, the coega spokesperson, said in response to the damages claim: "they are free to do whatever they think serves the best interests of their company."

brian jennings, an attorney at garlicke and bousfield, who is not involved in the matter, said: "our courts are not averse to awarding defamation claims. however, they are conservative when awarding damages. you will not get damages for defamation of r10 million in south africa." proving defamation depends on the comments being made public.



smit also pointed fingers at silinga for initiating a scorpions investigation into scribante, which silinga denies.

the war of words between the two parties began in july when scribante successfully applied for an urgent interdict to stop an infrastructure project at the industrial development zone.

this was after coega had awarded the tender to build substations and civil works to the sakhisizwe joint venture, despite scribante scoring higher in the tender process.

coega has since acknowledged that it was wrong to appoint sakhisizwe. but it has disputed that scribante should now get the contract, saying scribante had misled coega over the credentials of its empowerment subcontractors.

scribante has vigorously denied this. smit said scribante had only discovered that its lead empowerment subcontractor, amafela, was in provisional liquidation after the sakhisizwe joint venture had been appointed. but coega said scribante knew or should have known about this before the appointment was made, and should have informed coega.

smit also denied inflating the prices charged by subcontractors in order to score higher empowerment points.

the case is due to go to trial next week.