WHAT is to be done when the state creates an agency to deliver a crucial service, which is meant to cut corruption and boost efficiency — but proves to be, at the very best, not up to the task? Last month’s Constitutional Court judgment on the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) provided a bold answer to the question, giving the court an unusually invasive role in determining how Sassa will have to sort out the mess it was found to have made in awarding the tender to deliver social grants to 16-million beneficiaries.

The court had already found that the agency’s decision to award the tender to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) was unlawful, essentially because Sassa did not follow proper procedures. The latest judgment was about the remedy. The court not only ruled that the agency must start again and rerun the tender. It also set out how this must be done. And though, in the end, it left it to Sassa’s discretion to award (or not award) a new contract, the court did something unheard of — it prescribed what kind of contract this must be. It ruled that any new contract must be for five years, the same as the original tender — essentially to ensure that new potential bidders could compete on a level playing field.

The court also required the agency to appoint new committees to evaluate the bids and report back to it regularly, as well as imposing stringent reporting requirements on CPS, which it ruled must be kept in place in the interim to ensure everyone continues to receive their grants.

This was all quite unusual, but it was the five-year item that went furthest. The courts have generally stopped short of intervening at a detailed level in the work of state agencies and it’s not necessarily desirable that they should.

In this case, though, there’s a subtext. There is a long and turgid history to this tender, with allegations of corruption and impropriety dogging Sassa since its inception. The court found no proof of corruption. But the judgment was scathing about the agency, and the judges evidently didn’t rate its competence too highly. One can certainly imagine that they felt the need to ensure a clean process this time round.

But this ideally is not something the court should have to do. These are policy issues and the judgment and Sassa’s history raise important questions about how best to curb corruption in state tender processes that are as lucrative, and as crucial for citizens, as this one.

Originally, the nine provinces contracted with private-sector players to pay the grants. Sassa was set up in 2006 to centralise the system, the idea being that it could enhance efficiencies, lower costs and reduce corruption. The first tender process had to be cancelled and an independent adjudication committee found that it was "unreliable" and failed to achieve its objectives. Then came this second one in which, among other things, the terms were changed at the last moment favouring CPS, which got all nine provinces.

Costs have fallen, evidence in court showed, but not to the extent the National Treasury hoped for. It was keen to see the costs of paying out grants slashed by routing most of this through the banking system. But Sassa opted not to go this route. It has plans to build its empire by taking over the payout of grants itself by 2017. Not only is there little evidence that it has the competence to do that, but it is not at all clear why the government should be taking over an operation the private sector has the infrastructure to do.

A bigger policy question, though, is around the notion that setting up a centralised, supposedly expert agency, such as Sassa, is what’s needed to tackle corruption and inefficiency. The government has now promised to cut corruption by setting up a new State Tender Agency, which will adjudicate all tenders. It’s not clear how this will work. But the danger is that it could take decentralised corruption and mismanagement in the provinces and turn it in to much higher-level dodgy dealing.

Setting up new agencies is not in itself a recipe to fix problems, especially if those who staff them are not particularly expert. Nor is centralisation in itself the answer, unless the disciplines are there from the top to ensure that tender processes are done effectively and ethically. Making sure those disciplines are imposed is ultimately a matter for policy makers, and a question of political will — not one that the courts should have to detail.

• Joffe is deputy editor.