LIGHTHOUSE SAGA: Unpacking the political mess behind the DBE’s textbook row

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> Independent investigations into the Department of Basic Education’s new textbook catalogue have not produced any findings which justify scrapping it. The real story is about politics, not publishing.

For five months, the Department of Basic Education has been embroiled in an increasingly confusing and bitter dispute over its new Foundation Phase textbook catalogue.

The row was ostensibly catalysed by the publication of a media report casting doubt on the outcome of the catalogue process and relaying the disbelief of publishing insiders at the result.

At least five separate investigations into the textbook catalogue ordered at the behest of Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube have followed.

Daily Maverick has now obtained the two full forensic reports produced by independent investigators Rakoma & Associates, the Auditor-General of SA’s (Agsa’s) dedicated review of the Foundation Phase catalogue contained in the Agsa’s management report for the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE’s) 2025/26 audit, and the external legal opinion obtained from Chris Erasmus SC and advocate Hanny Kelaotswe.

These reports reveal administrative aspects of the catalogue process for which the DBE can rightly be criticised and should address: in particular, its failure to formalise important parts of an unusual procurement system and to disclose aspects of its pricing methodology upfront.

But these reports categorically do not show the corrupt, manipulated or fundamentally compromised catalogue invoked by big publishing houses and seemingly being used to justify the political decision to keep the catalogue suspended.

Not the forensic investigators, not the Auditor-General and not the external lawyers who have closely studied this matter have concluded that the catalogue outcome was unfair, illegal or manipulated. Not one of these reports has recommended that the catalogue outcome should be scrapped.

Just as importantly, the forensic report focused on Lighthouse Publishers , the tiny newcomer whose extraordinary success ostensibly triggered this saga, entirely exonerates Lighthouse of any wrongdoing.

This has not been made public in any way – despite the fact that Lighthouse’s directors and staff have spent almost half a year under a cloud of suspicion and have paid a high reputational price.

The people behind Lighthouse are victims of a political battle in which they played no part.