Afrirent to keep City of Joburg fleet on the road despite new contract not being approved

Less than a week after Avis car rental withdrew some of its rented fleet from the City of Joburg (CoJ), Afrirent has decided not to ground its 2 000 vehicles that the City is using.

“We have pledged to sign another extension with CoJ, so that residents can continue to receive the necessary services from the municipality without fear of interruption,” said Afrirent CEO, Senzo Tsabedze.

Withdrawal of Avis fleet

This will come as a relief to the City after Avis withdrew its fleet last week.

DA councillor Leah Knott last week said the Avis contract was for cars, bakkies and trucks that City officials drive – including police cars, City Power trucks and Joburg Water bakkies.

The tender for fire engines and the Pikitup waste trucks is separate.

The withdrawal of the fleet came amid delays to approve a new contract.

Democratic Alliance’s (DA) McKinnley Mitchell said the process to approve the new contract started in January.

Contract terminated

The last extension of the Avis and Afrirent non-specialised fleet contract was terminated at the end of October

“This contract had been awarded to Avis and Afrirent under a tender, which in 2020 National Treasury declared irregular and ordered the City to cancel it and do a thorough forensic investigation. The ANC government at the time did neither, and took no steps to start a new tender process,” said Mitchell.

“We inherited this mess from the ANC; an irregular contract that had been constantly extended and no investigation done. There is an investigation underway to establish whether Afrirent had made payments to politically-linked individuals, and a simple glance at the numbers showed that the City was not getting value for money.”

“The new tender process started in January 2022, and due to its high value (over R2 billion) and time period, we had to consult the public.”

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‘Reputational damage’

Tsabedze said the decision to extend the contract with the City of Johannesburg was a difficult one. He said the contract led to reputational damage for his company after some accused it of bribery.

Mitchell had previously said that an investigation is underway to establish whether Afrirent made payments to politically-linked individuals.

“Our name is being used for political point-scoring, the DA has been working with, and using, Afrirent cars for a year now and we have just agreed to another three months extension. Why is it only now that the DA thinks the contract doesn’t give value for money?” said Tsabedze.

“Afrirent currently supplies fleet services to more than 20 municipalities in South Africa that are led by different political parties, and we have never had issues – why is CoJ an exception?”

Procurement process

In 2020, Treasury sent a letter to the late Johannesburg mayor, Geoff Makhubo, raising concerns over the procurement process of the City’s fleet. It recommended that the contract be declared irregular and cancelled.

Part of the allegations was that Afrirent duplicated some of the cars in its billing.

Tsabedze has denied any wrongdoing.

“To date, we have not been found guilty of any wrongdoing and we remain ready to cooperate and work with law enforcement agencies, including the CoJ and Special Investigating Unit (SIU) on all contracts obtained by Afrirent,” he said.

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