Parliament on Lighthouse Publishers saga

The Chairperson of the Select Committee on Education, Sciences and the Creative Industries, Mr Makhi Feni, said the Lighthouse Publishers saga was a sad day, not only for education publishing, but transformation of the sector.

Mr Feni said the tender allegedly awarded for the provision of foundation phase books was covered in secrecy, with seemingly none of the requirements met when a quality catalogue is being screened for.

He said: “A few established and white owned companies are contributing thousands of titles even in vernacular when their interest is not in vernacular books. If due diligence could not be done on the winning bidder, what evidence do we have that the materials are even of acceptable use?”

Mr Feni said everything about the rogue tender seemed to have gone wrong. This is evidenced by many small and medium enterprises in the publishing space remaining in the dark about submission requirements, screening, and tight deadlines that were set for submission.

On Monday, the media reported that a little known company with no publishing experience had won the billion rand tender to provide books for the Foundation Phase catalogue. It was alleged that Lighthouse Publishers, a company with no business premises was founded three days after the terms of reference had been advertised.

Mr Feni said this alone was sinister and did not require any investigation but a restart of the programme. “White commercial companies have dominated the publishing space with no retribution and no consequence management. This process should be restarted but with full transparency this time, and from the submission phase.”

Mr Feni said it would be ideal if National Treasury was spared from this. “Everything about this contract seems rotten. This is not how a catalogue should be done. There are a lot of worthy black publishers whose works in vernacular should reflect in this catalogue, that is if DBE wants that,” said Mr Feni.

“The committee will forever condemn any possible corruption in this department which is so fundamental in the task of sharpening the minds of the future. It is unfortunate that the DBE allowed a situation to manifest where corruption could just flourish,” emphasised Mr Feni.

Enquiries:
Media Officer
Mr Sibongile Maputi
Cell: 081 052 6060
E-mail: smaputi@parliament.gov.za

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