The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) says it has accepted the findings of a much-delayed forensic investigation confirming many of the serious governance, procurement, labour and information-technology problems initially flagged by whistleblowers in 2024.

Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau appointed TSU Investigation Services to conduct a forensic probe into the allegations, which began in February 2025, and subsequently suspended COO Lungelo Ntobongwana and chief corporate services officer Lizo Makele in July 2025.

TSU was initially expected to finalise its investigation by May last year, but it was confirmed during a presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition on Friday that the final set of ten reports had been presented to the SABS board only on March 18 this year.

The investigation, it emerged, had been hampered by difficulties in accessing key information, compromised by a serious cyberattack on SABS in November 2024.

This not only disrupted the operations at the public entity, which maintains over 7 600 national standards and operates 28 testing laboratories, but also meant that the TSU eventually had to “image” 24 individual computers to secure the information it required to complete the investigation.

SABS chairperson Professor Bismark Tyobeka confirmed that the board and executive management had accepted the findings and had initiated a range of interventions to remedy the problems, including disciplinary proceedings.

The forensic report itself was not shared with the committee, but Acting CEO Blake Mosley-Lefatola provided an overview of its findings, which confirmed that there had been serious breaches of governance, recruitment and procurement processes.

These included evidence of irregular and wasteful expenditure, improper conduct by employees, the nonprocedural appointment of an executive to the role of acting CEO, undeclared conflicts of interest, duplicate payments of board fees, the appointment of an executive that failed to meet the minimum requirements for the post, a case of work experience being misrepresented during a recruitment process, inaccurate payroll capturing, the misuse of fixed-term contracts, the appointment of four new labs in a manner that breached government’s procurement legislation, and fruitless and wasteful expenditure in relation to a R24-million Building Management System contract.

Mosley-Lefatola said that 14 recommendations arising from the report had been implemented and another nine, including disciplinary hearings, were ongoing. He told the committee that the intention was to finalise the disciplinary hearings by the end of July.

Quarterly progress reports on the actions being taken to implement the recommendations would also be provided to the Minister and the department, which Deputy Minister Alexandra Abraham said could be shared with lawmakers at their request.

ONGOING ALLEGATIONS

DA spokesperson on trade, industry and competition Toby Chance welcomed the report but reported that he continued to receive worrying allegations of mismanagement at SABS, as well as attempts to intimidate or muzzle whistleblowers.

Tyobeka said that he, too, continued to receive allegations of wrongdoing against the current board and executive but urged recipients of such messages to be “judicious” in their treatment of these new accusations.

The organisation had been in deep distress in recent years and also “at war with itself” This, Tyobeka said, had resulted in emergence of employee “factions”, including those who opposed the actions being taken currently.

A whistleblowing channel, which was independent from management, was now in place, alongside a clear policy on how such complaints should be managed.

Tyobeka warned, however, that those employees who were found to be making false allegations could face disciplinary action. “Ultimately we need to separate fact from fiction,” he added.

Mosley-Lefatola said the TSU process had enabled SABS to directly address long-standing operational and institutional challenges that had negatively affected the public perception of the institution.

“We accept the findings and are committed to implementing all the recommendations to strengthen governance and accountability and to restore stability within the organisation.”

A change management process had also been initiated, but Mosley-Lefatola said that additional efforts would probably also be needed to restore an atmosphere of trust, which had broken down.