Fifty two contractors have been removed from the cidb register in the last 22 months. Two were removed for fraudulent conduct in the register's first 22 years. Both figures come from one speech. Use them as the Minister's numbers rather than the cidb's, and treat the 52 as a floor rather than a total. Then read your own vendor list against the record.
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson gave those figures at SIDSSA 2026 in Cape Town on 25 August 2026. The cidb page where findings of this kind are published is titled blacklisted contractors, and it is public. The current notice there removes 12 contractors with effect from 24 July 2026. If you appointed a firm eighteen months ago and have not looked since, that page is a different document now from the one you did not read then.
Twenty six times, in one twelfth of the time
The comparison is the story, not the absolute number. Fifty two against two is twenty six times as many removals, arriving in 22 months rather than 22 years. Macpherson said there are more on the way.
That changes what a registration check is worth. Checking at appointment used to be close to a formality, because almost nobody ever came off the register. A check run in 2023 stayed true not because anyone confirmed it again, but because the chance of removal was near zero.
It is not near zero now. A check is a dated result about a register that moves, and its date matters as much as its answer.
The speech has no names on it. The gazette does
Take the numbers seriously and the gaps just as seriously. The speech carries no names, no notice numbers and no removal dates, which is why it is nearly useless to a client on its own.
The page it points at is not vague at all. Removals are published as dated Government Gazette notices under regulation 30(2) of the Construction Industry Development Regulations, which requires the cidb to publish the particulars of Board findings against contractors removed from the register. Grounds are stated: contractors who have "breached the requirements and conditions of registration, including the submission of fraudulent documents as evidence of their track record for grading purposes". One mechanism, one regulation, names attached.
So the useful document is the notice, not the speech. Four are published: the live one effective 24 July 2026, and archives for April 2026, November 2025 and October 2025.
Fifty two is a floor, not a count
Bizcommunity reported the running total at 52 on 2 April 2026, citing the cidb: 40 contractors restricted in late 2025 and a further 12 in early 2026. Since then the cidb has gazetted the July 2026 notice, removing 12 more. Macpherson quoted 52 again on 25 August 2026.
No running total is published by the cidb itself, so nobody can hand you the current figure. What can be said is that the number in the news is at least one gazette notice behind the register, and that the direction of travel is the finding rather than the total.
The baseline is contested too. Macpherson and Bizcommunity put it at two contractors removed in the cidb's first 22 years. The Citizen, reporting the blacklisting of 40 contractors on 21 September 2025, put it at one company since 2002. Two of three say two, and the comparison holds either way.
Nor will the window pin down. Macpherson's 22 months implies October 2024; The Citizen dates the removals from June 2024; Bizcommunity's batching starts late 2025. The cidb's own notices go back only to October 2025. Use that, because it is the only date any of them will show you in writing.
Not the same list as Eskom's
Two of South Africa's registers moved in the same fortnight, and merging them is the easiest mistake available.
Eskom said on 20 August 2026 that its supplier disciplinary process had restricted 101 suppliers, including implicated directors and owners, for periods of up to ten years. Those restrictions run from February 2023 to 31 March 2026, and Eskom made 53 referrals to National Treasury. By that date, Treasury had recorded 35 companies and 45 directors or owners.
That process runs under National Treasury PFMA SCM Instruction No. 3 of 2021/22 and feeds the Treasury database of restricted suppliers. The cidb register has a different gatekeeper and a different test. A contractor can be clear on one and not the other.
A vendor audit that treats the two as one list produces a clean result that is wrong in one direction or the other. Run both, separately, and record which one you ran.
What to do about a contract already running
The question is not whether the firm was registered when you appointed it. It is what your contract says happens if that registration ends, and who at your end would find out.
The certificate was filed at appointment by whoever ran the procurement. Orders are raised afterwards by somebody else, often for years, and the two rarely meet again. That is why a removal reaches the client through a rumour or a stopped site rather than through the file.
Three questions close that gap and none needs the cidb to answer. Which live contracts require the contractor to hold and maintain cidb registration for the work being done? Who here would notice if one stopped? What does the contract entitle you to do about it, and on what notice?
Answer those in writing and a published notice becomes an administrative task instead of a discovery. Leave them unanswered and the first person to tell you will be the contractor, if anyone does.
Arabella verifies contractors once and keeps that verification current, so a client commissioning work sees a network already read against the notices rather than a list of names to go and check. What the check covers is on the client page, and the notices we read each week sit in insights.
On Monday
Work from the contracts running now, not the vendor list. For each, write three things on one line: the contractor's CRS number, the date somebody last confirmed the registration, and the clause covering what happens if it ends. The free public search at portal.cidb.org.za takes a name or a CRS number and shows status, designation and class of work.
Most files will have the first, some the second, almost none the third. That absence is the finding, and it is cheaper to fix in a quiet week than in the month a notice is published carrying a name you recognise.
