What R2 million for 22 laptops could buy

The money the Mpumalanga basic education department spent on 22 laptops could have bought teachers a top-end MacBook Pro or a GeForce RTX 5080-equipped gaming laptop.

The department’s procurement of 22 laptops for R2.02 million came under the spotlight during a question-and-answer session in the provincial legislature in mid-April 2025.

Mpumalanga Premier Mandla Ndlovu has since revealed the outcome of an investigation into the procurement, stating that his office was made aware of the issue in February 2025.

The report found that the procurement of the laptops involved misrepresentation and possible fraud by the supplier and department officials.

The premier explained that the department had appointed a service provider to supply 22 Dell XPS 15 laptops at R91,482.50 each.

The investigation’s rough scan of market prices revealed that the estimated resale price of this laptop, with a 15% markup, was roughly R66,095. 

However, the supplier did not provide these laptops. Instead, they procured 20 Dell XPS 13 units and two XPS 14s. These had even lower estimated resale prices of R59,200 and R64,580, respectively. 

At the time of publication, Dell’s South African online store had prices much lower than the investigation’s estimates, from R42,899 for the XPS 13 and R58,399 for the XPS 16.

Even these “entry-level” models had decent specifications, such as Intel Core Ultra 7 processors and 16GB RAM. The cheapest XPS 16 also had a GeForce RTX 4050 GPU.

While the reason for the deviation from the stipulated specifications has not been confirmed, Dell did discontinue the XPS 15 in 2024, so it is possible the supplier could not find stock.

In any event, it would be strange for basic education department employees to require an XPS model, as their responsibilities typically don’t require such high specifications.

MyBroadband also found that the last prices on record for the XPS 15 models from major retailer Evetech ranged from R44,999 to R68,999, depending on the amount of RAM and SSD capacity.

All these models come with a 13th-gen Intel Core i7-13700H processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU with 6GB VRAM. The table below summarises the pricing. 

Alternative powerhouse computers

If the department had bought the laptops at retail, it would have been able to buy the top-spec models and saved over R22,000 per unit.

If it opted for the “entry-level” models with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, it would have spent less than half its budget or bought 44 laptops instead.

MyBroadband also searched prominent online PC hardware retailers to see what other types of laptops the department could have gotten for similar prices.

Our first stop was the iStore, which sells what is arguably the best all-round high-performance laptop — the Apple MacBook Pro.

The most expensive option for less than the price of each laptop bought by the Mpumalanga education department was an M4 Max model with 36GB of unified memory and a 1TB SSD.

The M4 Max is a powerhouse with incredible performance in demanding multimedia applications.

It can support output to four displays at a time, including three at 6K resolution and 60Hz and the fourth at 4K resolution and 144Hz.

While the MacBook Pro is an exceptional laptop, Windows is the most widely used operating system for corporate and government use in South Africa.

The price the department paid for its laptops goes well beyond that of other Windows models typically used in these environments and steps into the territory of the gaming laptop.

At the time of publication, the most expensive and powerful laptop available on Evetech for under R91,482.50 was the MSI Raider 18 HX.

This beastly gaming laptop features an Intel Core Ultra 9-285HX processor, Nvidia RTX 5080 graphics card with 16GB VRAM, 64GB DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB NVMe SSD.

It also boasts a 4K display with a 120Hz refresh rate, numerous ports for connecting a wide range of peripherals, and the latest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards.

The table below summarises the specifications of the MacBook Pro or MSI Raider HX laptop, which could have been bought for less than what the department paid for its Dell XPS 13 and XPS 16 laptops.