Medical scheme administrator Medscheme has removed from the roll its urgent application against South Africa’s second-biggest open medical scheme, Bonitas, in which it seeks to interdict the appointment of two new service providers.
Bonitas in January appointed Momentum to take over its administration service contract and awarded the contract for managed care services to Private Health Administrators (PHA). The new contracts ended Medscheme’s 44-year relationship with Bonitas.
The move not only dealt a financial blow to Medscheme, Bonitas’ administrator since 1982, but also to its parent company, JSE-listed Afrocentric.
Medscheme handles the administration of 680,000 beneficiaries of the Bonitas medical scheme and its contracts with Bonitas will come to an end in May.
Medscheme launched the urgent application against Bonitas in December, alleging the tender process was compromised, and requested the court to interdict the awarding of the administrator and managed care provider contracts pending the outcome of the Council for Medical Schemes probe into alleged tender irregularities.
The case was scheduled for hearing on Tuesday before judge Gregory Wright but was removed by agreement of the parties. “The application was removed from the urgent roll by agreement of the parties as the matter is not yet ripe for hearing,” Medscheme told Business Day.
The removal from the urgent roll is not the end of the litigation and the matter will be re-enrolled.
‘Complex issues’
“The application raises complex issues of fact and law; and the papers are voluminous and currently exceed more than 1,200 pages. It is likely that the matter will take two full days of argument.”
Bonitas principal officer Lee Callakoppen said the parties are in the process of exchanging pleadings and dealing with interlocutory matters.
“The matter was removed from the roll as Medscheme’s replying affidavit has not yet been properly delivered. Additionally, certain interlocutory matters are yet to be resolved. Accordingly, the matter is not yet ripe for hearing,” Callakoppen said.
He said once the matter is ripe for hearing, Medscheme intends to make an application for a hearing date.
Callakoppen, in his answering affidavit, argues the awarding of the contracts to new service providers on January 28 renders moot Medscheme’s application.
Despite the awarding of the tenders, Afrocentric will proceed with the litigation.
“The allegation levelled by Medscheme is that tenders 3 and 4 [awarded in January] have been engineered by Bonitas in such a way to ensure PHA would be awarded both contracts.
“This would mean that Medscheme, on its own version, would be excluded from being considered and being appointed to render the services. That is factually incorrect,” the Callakoppen affidavit reads.
Medscheme’s application challenging the recent tenders, which went out for bidding in 2025, is pinned on the Council for Medical Schemes’ decision to initiate a probe into two tenders awarded in 2022 and 2024 in which allegations of irregularities were made against Bonitas.
The alleged irregularities were flagged in a marketing and sales distribution services tender awarded to Agile Business Solutions, led by Tobie du Preez, a former Afrocentric Group executive, in 2024. The contract was previously awarded to Afrocentric Distribution Services, part of Afrocentric.
The appointment of PHA in 2022 to administer Bonitas’ low-income option, Boncap, previously administered by Medscheme, forms part of the probe.
Callakopen contends the tenders from two to four years ago were unrelated to the ones recently awarded to Momentum and PHA.
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