ConCourt Declares Public Procurement Act 2024 Invalid
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The law that was meant to rewrite every government tender rule in the country is now invalid. Not amended. Invalid. If you have clients chasing state contracts, the rulebook they were preparing for no longer exists. On 17 September 2026, the Constitutional Court declared the Public Procurement Act, 2024 invalid. The Court found the Act had been adopted in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution. The Minister of Finance issued a media statement on the same day, saying he has noted and respects the judgment of the highest court in the Republic.
The court case
The Public Procurement Act 28 of 2024 was signed into law in 2024. It was meant to replace the patchwork of procurement rules across national, provincial and local government with one framework, to set up a Public Procurement Office inside National Treasury, and to repeal the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act 5 of 2000. It had not yet come into operation.
Two applications went straight to the Constitutional Court, one by the Premier of the Western Cape Government and one by the City of Cape Town, with amaBhungane and Solidarity also involved. The case was not about whether the rules in the Act were good or bad policy. It was about how Parliament passed it.
The Constitution requires Parliament to give the public a reasonable chance to take part in making laws. The Court, in a unanimous judgment by Nuku AJ, found Parliament did not do that. A new chapter was added to the Bill during the process, and the public was never given a proper opportunity to comment on that material change. On that finding alone, the Act fell.
The Court declared the Act invalid outright. It did not suspend the declaration and it did not tell Parliament how to fix the problem. As the Court put it, if Parliament wants to pass the Act or something similar, it is free to do so, as long as the public participation process is constitutionally sound this time.
What the Minister said
In his statement, the Minister repeated that public procurement is a key enabler of economic growth, but said this cannot happen in a weak procurement system. He listed what is wrong with the current environment, including corruption, fraud, financial loss, poor planning, weak institutional capacity and irregular expenditure.
He said he will engage the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces on the way forward after studying the implications of the judgment, and confirmed his commitment to advancing procurement legislative reform.
What this means for accountants
The first point to make to clients is that the old law is still the law. Because the Act never came into operation, its repeal of the PPPFA never took effect. Procurement continues under the PFMA, the MFMA, the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act 5 of 2000 and the Preferential Procurement Regulations, 2022. Until Parliament passes something new or Treasury issues a circular, that is the framework that governs every bid on your clients' desks.
The second point is more urgent. If a client has already started changing supply chain management documents, bid evaluation criteria or B-BBEE scorecards to line up with the 2024 Act, those changes need to be reversed now. An award made on criteria drawn from an invalid statute can be challenged on legality grounds, and the challenge will come from the losing bidder, not from Treasury. The same applies to any transition project you or your client budgeted for.
The draft regulations we covered in Government Is Rewriting the Rules on Public Procurement are now without a parent Act. The supplier database, the debarment register and the new bid evaluation matrix all depended on the Act to exist. Do not build client compliance plans or quote for readiness work on that basis until a new Bill is passed.
There is also an opportunity here. A fresh Bill means a fresh public participation process, and this time Parliament has been told by the Constitutional Court to run it properly. If you work with clients in the public sector supply chain, that comment window is worth watching for.
In the meantime, the risk you already manage stays the same. Irregular expenditure findings do not pause while legislation is rewritten, as we set out in Irregular, Unauthorised, Fruitless: Three Different Disasters.
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