EDITORIAL | Tshwane moves to blacklist Edwin Sodi after years of failed state contracts

For nearly two decades, tender king Edwin Sodi has pocketed hundreds of millions of rand from state contracts that, by all accounts, were a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.

Despite glaring shortcomings in the work he was paid so handsomely to do, Sodi has lived a charmed life — assembling a jaw-dropping property portfolio and rubbing shoulders with the great and powerful, among them Deputy President Paul Mashatile.

This week, the Tshwane metro council finally submitted its application to the National Treasury to have Sodi blacklisted, a move that would bar him from any future work with the entity.

This is only a first step, as the full force of the law must still be brought to bear in his case

Its excuse for delaying this matter of public interest has been an apparent inability to locate him to serve papers — almost six years after, in May 2022, Sodi’s R295m contract to upgrade the Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant was terminated after a damning auditor-general report exposing procurement irregularities.

Dozens of people died from cholera, prompting a presidential visit from Cyril Ramaphosa, who described himself as “shocked”. In 2023, Ramaphosa ordered the Special Investigating Unit to probe the contract.

Sodi is a known donor to the ANC, as was heard at the Zondo commission. That his companies were awarded the Rooiwal contract in the first place would be unusual were it not for the suspicion that his largesse has earned him protection at the highest levels. It cannot have been on the basis of his track record for excellent projects that he was thus blessed.

Several years before, in 2014, Sodi and his companies were awarded a R255m tender to remove asbestos from state housing in the Free State. Only about R21m of the work was ever completed. Sodi is among the accused facing criminal charges in connection with that project alongside former Free State premier Ace Magashule.

The move to blacklist Sodi could not have come a moment too soon. It offers a glimmer of hope that the days of impunity for politically connected individuals may be ending. But this is only a first step, as the full force of the law must still be brought to bear in his case.