Procurement Policy Subversion in Contracts Between South African Retailers and Suppliers

Abstract: This chapter focuses on tensions and regulatory gaps impacting public procurement reform in the private sector (supply chain) doing business with government in South Africa. Through a careful examination of supply chain practices based on fieldwork, Von Broembsen documents opportunities that public procurement legislations create for black suppliers and demonstrates that formal rather than substantive empowerment is being met. Analysis of the operative dynamics of the “law-politics-business” matrix shows it is not the absence of hard law, but the reality of asymmetric bargaining power between parties, that subverts policy objectives in preferential procurement in South Africa.