Textbook Tender Is Corrupting Education
South Africans are the undisputed world champions of the “MacGyver” lifestyle. Living in this country is like living in an ongoing episode of a survival reality show.
When the taps run dry, we perform a rain dance toward our JoJo tanks. When the lights go out we recreate romantic 19th-century candlelit vigils, and we’ve learned to navigate potholes with the precision of lunar rover pilots. With true South African resilience, we’ve decided that if the state won’t provide the basics, we’ll just build a parallel universe in our backyards.
But you can’t JoJo tank a child’s education.
You can’t “load-shed” their ability to read, there is no “workaround” for a missing textbook, and you certainly can’t bypass a corrupt procurement process by lighting a few extra candles and hoping for the best.
Our children trust us to make sure they have the tools they need to make a better future for themselves and our country. But when the evil tendrils of corruption start wrapping themselves around our schools, threatening to deprive our children of their sacred right to an education, we cannot simply “make-a-plan” our way out of it.
For the past few weeks, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has been at the centre of a scandal that threatens to derail the education of almost 14 million learners before it’s even started.
At the heart of the controversy is a R1.6 billion procurement disgrace that has exposed deep fractures within the Department. What was intended as a long-overdue refresh of the national textbook catalogue – the first for the Foundation Phase since 2012 – has devolved into a saga of parliamentary inquiries, internal audits, and Treasury investigations.
The apparent villain of the piece is newly established company Lighthouse Publishers (Pty) Ltd. According to a report by News24, it secured approval for 1 707 out of 1 734 titles it submitted for the national foundation phase catalogue, a 98.4% approval rate. That translated to roughly 26% of all materials approved for Grades 1 to 3 nationwide.
Lighthouse’s 98.4% approval rate stands in sharp contrast to a competitor like Via Afrika, a publisher with 77 years of history in South African educational publishing. Via Afrika announced it was winding down operations because it was “unsuccessful in getting books approved on the recently issued Foundation Phase catalogue,” adding that “this has resulted in the write-off of a significant investment.” Daily Maverick
There are three key issues making Lighthouse Publishers such a controversial player:
According to records, the company was only registered three days after the DBE advertised the tender’s terms of reference.
Investigations have since shown the company doesn’t have an established business premises – its registered address is a residential cottage in Simon’s Town linked to one of the company directors.
The company has no prior record in educational publishing.
In Parliament, the Select Committee on Education Chairperson, Makhi Feni, did not mince words, describing the situation as a “sad day” for sector transformation, and labelling the process as “rotten” and shrouded in secrecy.
The lack of due diligence has led to a fundamental question: if the department can’t discern a bidder’s credentials, how can parents and teachers feel confident that the materials they produce are to the standard our learners deserve?
Adding to the confusion and uncertainty is a recent investigation by senior Daily Maverick journalist Rebecca Davis. After the initial News24 story broke, Davis reported that things could be more nuanced than we were first led to believe.
According to her article, the procurement was technically a “deviation” from National Treasury rules and not a standard tender, because of the inherent complexity of textbook publishing.
She identified Penelope Groom, director of the literacy organisation Class Act, as a key figure behind Lighthouse. Groom reportedly built a network of 135 contributors to develop the submitted materials, many of whom worked without upfront payment in exchange for future royalties. The argument is that it was a legitimate attempt to address the 14-year stagnation of African language reading materials.
However, even if the intentions were to revitalise vernacular publishing, the methods used are what’s now being called into question.
The Daily Maverick admits that the industry is “cutthroat,” with many publishers almost entirely dependent on government contracts. One publisher, for example, estimated that state textbook sales account for 90% of their total revenue. This creates a breeding ground for what Parliament was told is a culture of “bribery, collusion, and deception.”
Then there’s the added complication of the apparent rift at the top of the DBE. There are reports of ongoing tensions between Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube and Director-General Mathanzima Mweli, and suggestions that Lighthouse Publishers may have become “unwitting pawns” in a broader political conflict within the department.
On one hand, we have Minister Gwarube referring the matter to National Treasury, citing “serious concern” over media reports and internal “red flags” identified by a preliminary audit
On the other, we see some DBE officials telling Parliament that they hadn’t identified any defects or concerns in the procurement process.
The whole thing smacks of a lot more than office politics – and it has potentially severe consequences for the 2027 school year.
Books need to be in learners’ hands in January next year. Ordering was supposed to start next month, but the whole hot mess of “is it corruption or is it a ‘deviation from normal tender processes’” has pushed things back.
And there are other stakeholders here, too. Legitimate SMEs and black-owned publishers, desperate for a piece of the pie, are being kept in the dark about submission deadlines and requirements. They can only watch in anger and frustration as a single newcomer has seemingly bypassed the hurdles and kept them out of the action.
We can only hope that Treasury’s probe into the controversy yields tangible – and speedy – results, so that January’s Foundation Phase children don’t find themselves without books, or with books that don’t meet the required quality and content criteria.
As Minister Gwarube said to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana,”I cannot allow the future of our children to be compromised by corrupt individuals… Any compromise in the integrity of textbook procurement directly threatens the ability of the education system to function effectively and undermines the constitutional right of every child to access basic education.”
And it’s this that is really the crux of the matter. Because this is not just corruption in the financial sense; it’s corruption of the very foundation of learning. Grades 1-3 are the most critical period in a child’s academic journey – where they transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” If we cannot give them the right books at the right time, we are effectively sabotaging the literacy levels of an entire generation.
As I write, the textbook procurement process faces no fewer than four potential investigations: an internal DBE audit, a National Treasury probe, a specific inquiry into the Lighthouse appointment, and a referral to the Public Protector.
As a forensic investigator, I more than understand that investigations are necessary to ensure accountability, but as a parent, I also understand that they must be conducted with a sense of extreme urgency.
The government and all stakeholders must prioritise the future of South African education over political point-scoring or corporate profit. The situation is far too reminiscent of 2012 when the Basic Education Department found itself in court, accused of failing to deliver textbooks to schoolchildren in the northern Limpopo province.
Two years previously, Limpopo’s education department decided to contract out the procurement and distribution of textbooks to a company called EduSolutions. Solly Tshitangano, a senior education official at the time of the deal, said then that politicians and officials only decided to outsource textbook supply so they could find a new way to defraud the taxpayer.
“They wanted a way to corrupt the system, and the only way is when you bring in a middle-man,” he said. “This was just the tip of the iceberg. It was not the only deal that was taking money away from the government.”
He was later fired by the Limpopo’s government for “gross insubordination and gross negligence.” He maintains it was because he had blown the whistle on the EduSolutions deal and other questionable tenders.
It’s hugely concerning to me that, 14 years later, we find ourselves in a hauntingly similar situation. Have we learned nothing?
The Department of Basic Education must act decisively. If the process is flawed, it must be restarted with total transparency. If malfeasance is uncovered, those implicated must face criminal charges.
We are talking about the education of 13.7 million learners. To treat their future as a secondary concern to procurement rules or “cutthroat” industry competition is a failure of governance, and a bitter betrayal of our country’s future.
Our children deserve better than to be the ultimate losers in a corrupt game of adult greed.