The chair of parliament’s portfolio committee on communications, Khusela Diko, has taken Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso to task over comments she made suggesting IT procurement in government should be decentralised.
Diko’s comments were in response to an opinion piece penned by Mavuso and published by TechCentral last week.
In the article, Mavuso argued that efforts to reform the embattled State IT Agency (Sita) – which is mandated by law to procure IT products and services for government exclusively – have failed, largely as a result of parties “politicising the matter”.
Mavuso suggested the decentralisation of IT procurement away from Sita as an alternative, a move that would end the agency’s “monopoly” over government IT.
In an X post on Thursday, Diko challenged Mavuso to name any business that’s a member of BLSA that allows its operating companies to “run their own IT systems outside of what group prescribes” that they use.
“Can the CEO give one example from their many members of a corporate company that allows its different divisions/business units to run their own IT systems outside of what [the] group prescribes? Where generally it’s a free for all, HQ (headquarters) does not give direction and directives of IT systems the company must run. Like ba everyone in the company just wakes up and goes to buy whatever IT systems they want to buy and we will see later because ‘we must end the monopoly’,” said Diko caustically.
‘Bypassing the law’
“The ability of government to embrace and work with world-class IT systems is too important to politicise the issue. Yet, unfortunately, efforts to reform Sita have now become embroiled in party politics. Proposals by communications minister Solly Malatsi to change regulations to empower state entities to appoint their own IT service providers rather than being forced to use Sita have been met with strong opposition from MPs. That is despite the new regulations having strong support from ministers across the government of national unity,” said Mavuso in her column.
Read: It’s time to end Sita’s monopoly over state IT
Malatsi’s plan, introduced to parliament in March, to allow government departments to source their own IT solutions without Sita’s involvement was also met with criticism from Diko, who accused him of “bypassing the law” and seeking to “devolve Sita’s powers” by suggesting interventions that minimise Sita’s involvement instead of fixing the organisation.
“The minister has merit on some of the issues that he wants to address, and he is well within his right to do so. But he has to follow proper process and stick to the letter and spirit of the law,” Diko said at the time.
Meanwhile, it came to light in parliament earlier this week that Mpumalanga’s basic education department overpaid when procuring 22 laptops for some its managers at a cost of R2-million. Each laptop cost the department just over R90 000.
Sita denied any involvement in the matter, suggesting the Mpumalanga basic education department had not followed its procurement prescripts. Although Sita officials met with the department on Wednesday, the fact that its procurement protocols were bypassed may call into question the organisation’s ability to oversee government IT spend effectively. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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