A restriction from state work follows the person who signed for it. As at 20 August 2026, National Treasury had recorded 35 companies and 45 directors or owners on its database of restricted suppliers, following referrals from Eskom's supplier disciplinary process. There are more people on that list than there are companies. Registering a fresh entity does not wash a name off it.
Eskom said on 20 August 2026 that the process had restricted 101 suppliers, including implicated directors and owners, from doing business with Eskom for periods of up to ten years. Those restrictions were applied between February 2023 and 31 March 2026 and cover cases dating from 2015, most of them from the 2016 to 2022 period. Fifty three of the matters were referred on to National Treasury. Ten years is the ceiling Eskom's Supplier Review Committee sets for itself, on Eskom's own description of its policy, and it should not be repeated as a statutory maximum.
What being on the list actually does
Eskom points to paragraph 6.5 of PFMA SCM Instruction No. 3 of 2021/22 as the provision that lets National Treasury record restricted suppliers and their directors on the national database. The consequence Eskom states is short. A listed supplier is barred from doing business with the State for the length of the restriction.
For a contracts manager at a Grade 6 CE civils firm, the cost is not the one tender that was lost. It is every organ of state, for years, while the fixed overhead carries on regardless. Plant finance, a yard, a contracts department and an estimating team cost the same in a year when you are not allowed to bid.
The part most contractors get wrong
The question people ask is whether the work can move to the other company. The database answers it indirectly and unhelpfully. It carries directors and owners by name, not only companies, so a new registration number sits on top of a name that is still there.
Forty five people against thirty five companies means the average listed company put more than one name onto the record. Whether a client finds those names depends entirely on how that client checks. A procurement officer who matches company registration numbers alone will pass a restricted director straight through. One who searches people will not.
That is the gap this disclosure opens up, and it runs both ways. Any client with a vendor panel now has thirty five company names and forty five personal names to run against it, and most panels have never been checked on the second list.
Where the two accounts do not agree
On 20 August 2026 Daily Investor carried an allegation by The Association of Private Security Owners of South Africa, TAPSOSA. Its claim is that Eskom referred 26 black owned security companies to National Treasury for blacklisting without proper process. Spokesperson Sindiswa Changuion put it this way. "For some of those companies ... it had nothing to do with them being fraudulent or corrupt." TAPSOSA's case is that the underlying disputes were service level failures. Daily Investor says it approached Eskom and had no response before publishing.
Eskom's statement of the same day contradicts that on both limbs. It says that of the 53 referrals made to National Treasury, only one supplier provides security related services. And it says directly that it did not refer suppliers to National Treasury for ordinary operational or contractual performance issues, such as isolated Service Level Agreement failures. Eskom denies that due process was skipped, says affected suppliers or their legal representatives were given an opportunity to make representations, and denies the companies were targeted for whistleblowing. TAPSOSA is not a party to the underlying supplier discipline matters, on Eskom's account, and has not answered the denial publicly.
So the two accounts do not merely emphasise different things. They disagree on how many of the referred suppliers are security firms at all, and on whether SLA performance was ever a basis for referral. Neither is resolved. If you are deciding what to do this week, act on what the database says about your names, not on the argument about how the names got there.
The ninety day clock
Eskom says it now aims to process and resolve newly referred supplier discipline cases within 90 days. That is a stated policy target rather than a deadline in law, and no start date was attached to it. Taken at face value it means a new matter opened against your company is meant to reach a decision inside a quarter.
It also tells you the direction of travel. Eskom says further matters are being prepared for submission to National Treasury, so 35 companies and 45 directors is a reading on one day, not a final number.
What to do on Monday
Write down every director, member and shareholder of your company, and every other entity in which any of them holds an interest. Run the people, not only the company, against the Restricted Supplier and Tender Defaulter Report, which National Treasury publishes as a free download. Do it before you sign the next tender declaration, because a declaration signed over a listed name is a second problem stacked on the first.
Then do the same exercise on your joint venture partners. A restriction sitting on the other party to a JV is a problem you inherit at award, and it is a cheaper thing to find now than at handover.
This is the check Arabella runs before any contractor is introduced to a client, and it runs on people rather than on registration numbers for exactly the reason above. A company record can be six weeks old and spotless while the person behind it is listed for another eight years. What we ask for before an introduction is set out on the contractor page, and the rest of the week's compliance reading sits in insights.
