How fear, habit, and hope keep us stuck in flawed processes.
You must be 100% local…and have 10 years of international experience.
You must comply with clause 5.3 – which directly contradicts clause 7.4.
You must respond to an RFP so vague it could describe anything from a chatbot to a photocopier.
We’ve all seen it. We’ve all whined about it. And we all kept bidding anyway.
Take South Africa’s infamous “tall trains” saga. A R3.5 billion rail contract was awarded to a shell company with no track record and trains that were too tall for the actual tracks. The specs? Allegedly reverse-engineered to match a preferred supplier’s product.
Or SANRAL, the South African National Roads Agency (the state-owned body responsible for national road infrastructure), which canned R17 billion in tenders after its own board discovered internal teams had ignored the rules. A bidder who should have been disqualified was recommended for the award. The industry erupted and then quietly scrambled to rebid under tighter deadlines with their pricing already exposed.
Eskom, South Africa’s embattled state-owned power utility, cancelled a ‘mission-critical’ billing system RFP four months in, admitting the scope was flawed. Its nuclear tender went further off the rails: a court overturned the award because Eskom added “strategic considerations” after the bids were in. You can’t make this stuff up.
And then there’s the R180 billion National Lottery licence, a bid process so politically fraught that it made headlines before the award was even announced. The contract went to a consortium with questionable technology partners and direct links to ruling party insiders. Competing bidders cried foul, citing conflicts of interest, opaque scoring, and shifting deadlines. At one point, even the High Court had to step in to block a backdoor appointment. The irony? It’s a lottery – and still, it didn’t feel like a fair game.
And that’s merely a sample from the public sector.
As bidding professionals, we say we want better procurement, clearer scopes, cleaner processes, fewer games. But we keep twisting ourselves into knots to comply with tenders that are contradictory, broken, or blatantly unfair. Why? Because we’re too scared to walk away.
So, here’s the paradox: it’s not just the RFP that’s the problem. It’s us.
We’re meant to be the voice of reason in the chaos. When we choose silence over scrutiny, when we reward bad behaviour with great bids, we teach buyers that this is acceptable. That we’ll absorb the inefficiency. That we’ll play along no matter the cost.
It’s time to lead, not just comply. Escalate before you submit. Decline strategically. Push for reform internally and externally. Because the most valuable bid you ever write might be the one you refuse to deliver. Not all work is worth winning. And not all silence is neutral.
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