Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition chairperson Mzwandile Masina has supported a call from members of the committee, initiated by the DA’s Toby Chance, for an urgent oversight visit to the troubled South African Bureau of Standards (SABS).

The call was made during a meeting on November 11 at which senior SABS executives, including acting CEO Blake Mosley-Lefatola, and board members, were absent, and at which outdated and incomplete financials were provided by the SABS staff members present.

In a scathing assessment of the briefing, Chance, who is the DA’s spokesperson on trade, industry and competition, warned that the performance suggested that the SABS was facing an existential crisis.

“Not a single board member was present at the meeting and the Ministerial team and director-general sent their apologies due to Cabinet committee commitments. The acting CEO was off sick. This left the head of compliance risk and legal services to lead the SABS delegation,” Chance wrote in a statement following the meeting.

“What they presented was not a pretty sight. A ransomware cyberattack in November 2024 crippled its systems so badly it had to re-build them from scratch. The loss of data meant the annual report was published over a year late, while the Auditor General has yet to review the 2025/26 results,” he added.

Chance described the SABS as being at the heart of South Africa’s quality system and noted that the SABS mark had, at one time, been a trusted signifier of quality for South African-manufactured products.

“Its decline has to be reversed as part of the Government of National Unity’s commitment to appoint fit-for-purpose individuals on merit, rather than the rag-tag collection of misfits who have run this treasured institution into the ground.”

Besides Chance, the other committee members who raised their objections to the composition of the delegation and concerns about the state of the SABS, included Katherine Christie, also of the DA, the ANC’s Malusi Gigaba, and the MKP’s Siyabonga Gama.

Masina curtailed questioning of those SABS representatives who appeared before the committee, saying that the committee could not accept the report presented in the absence of the board members and executives who were meant to be accountable for the organisation and its turnaround.

“We take serious exception to both the management and the board of the SABS,” Masina said, describing their failure to attend the briefing as suggestive of a “delinquent institution”.

“We will write a letter to the Minister and the director-general to express our dissatisfaction,” he added, while indicating that it was no longer acceptable for the SABS to be led by an acting CEO.

Masina said he would write to Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau insisting on an urgent oversight meeting so that lawmakers could establish the true state of the organisation and whether the turnaround was indeed taking place.

Department of Trade, Industry and Competition director-general Simphiwe Hamilton, who joined the virtual meeting only after the SABS presentation, acknowledged the concerns raised by committee members and committed to facilitating the oversight visit.